Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Adding Kant To History’s Most Destructive Minds

    [I]‘m going to add Kant (obscurant anti-realism), to the ranks of history’s most destructive minds: Cantor(obscurant Pseudoscience), Freud(obscurant pseudoscience), Marx(pseudoscience), Napoleon (total war), Constantine(christianization of Europe), Plato (the Republic), Abraham(monotheism), Zoroaster (divine scripture).

    Intellectual Sainthood
    – Aristotle
    – Machiavelli
    – Bacon, Newton and Leibniz
    – Smith, Hume and Jefferson
    – Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser;
    – Pareto, Durkheim, Weber and Hayek.
    – Poincaré, Mandelbrot, Brouwer, Bishop, Taleb

    [N]ow, if I could get Hoppe off his Continental and Kantian platonism, then he would have be the first person to succeed in reducing all rights to property rights. Even if his definition of property is incomplete he would have done it. He managed to articulate the morality of states, but not the morality of polities necessary for the voluntary organization of production. And possibly, that was his only goal. Whereas with propertarianism, I’ve illustrated the definition of property necessary for the formation of a polity capable of voluntary organization of production in the absence of a state. But he isn’t a candidate for intellectual sainthood if he’s stuck in Kantian nonsense.

    Failing that I’m stuck with doing it myself. And while I feel I have mastered ethics better than anyone else, I do not feel the same for philosophy proper. And while I’m getting there, I’m not there yet. I’m getting there. But the standard of measure is not my own comprehension, but the structure of my arguments. And I am just getting, after a year of solid hard work, to where I feel I can construct those arguments.

    Einstein was right (even if a plagiarist) that most of doing something innovative is just working at it longer than anyone else.

  • Philosophical Matchsticks

    [P]hilosophy is too much like giving children matches to play with. And as Durant said, there are really no answers there. History is the only evidence of the nature of man, and the answers to our political nature are there. Philosophy is, at best, just a tool that helps us reduce our ever-present tendency to err. It is more often a tool by which we increase our errors. At its worst, it is a tool for self deception, or the deception of others. BUT If I succeed with a logic of cooperation, and the morality of stating philosophy operationally, I think that I will have ‘cured’ discourse.

  • Philosophical Matchsticks

    [P]hilosophy is too much like giving children matches to play with. And as Durant said, there are really no answers there. History is the only evidence of the nature of man, and the answers to our political nature are there. Philosophy is, at best, just a tool that helps us reduce our ever-present tendency to err. It is more often a tool by which we increase our errors. At its worst, it is a tool for self deception, or the deception of others. BUT If I succeed with a logic of cooperation, and the morality of stating philosophy operationally, I think that I will have ‘cured’ discourse.

  • Burning Obscurant And Platonic Philosophy On The Pyre Of Deception

    [M]ost of my attacks on a priorism are tests to see if the delta in utility between ratio-empirical and ‘Real’, and aprioristic-deductive and platonic, is sufficient to compel a change in method, but I am clearly dealing with very habituated people, and not giving them enough of a breadcrumb trail. And worse, I’m leading them into a dark and unfamiliar conceptual forest where they don’t want to follow. What do moral men do, when moral intuition fails them? They can’t do much until they learn enough new tools with which to restate their emotional intuitions in different terms now that the old terms are invalidated. Even the best people, who tend to be technologists, conflate general rule, theory, and axiom, into a single utilitarian category. Yet again demonstrating the difference between knowledge of use and knowledge of construction. I suppose I will just keep attacking a priorism as incomplete, and utilitarian, but now also as immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-kantian and cosmopolitan-hermeneutic forms of deception. Part of the revolt against ratio-scientific. Although since I’ve already outed Rothbardian ethics as parasitic, and stated that Misesian praxeology was an error, I suppose that adding that a priorism (or any kantian construct) is immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-cosmopolitan attack on human reason so loathed by Rand is just a continuation of my criticisms. So libertarianism as constructed, prior to its ratio-scientific expression in Propertarianism, is: a) parasitic b) insufficient for the production of a voluntary polity. c) argumentatively obscurant and immoral d) fails the test of its claims (deducibility of the scope of economics) e) inferior to ratio-scientific method for the accumulation of general rules of human behavior. But with Propertarianism, all of these faults are corrected. Of course people being as simple as they are, and even the best philosophers fairly weak, it’s probably lost that my attack on a priorism is an attempt to delegitimize on the right and libertarian spectrum, the same as I delegitimize on left-postmodern and socialist programs. I can’t kill off the obscurantist deceptions of the left without killing off the same techniques on the libertarian corner of the political spectrum. No matter what corner of the political spectrum one advocates, the prohibition on obscurantism that invalidates the arguments of the others, invalidates one’s own as well. All I have to do with the right is to give them a rational language. Most of what they believe is right in the first place. They just don’t have the ability to talk about it in rational terms – and perhaps once I focus there, I’ll be equally frustrated by their lack of intellectualism and mindless dependence on moral intuition. And perhaps at that point I will have to fight the battle against religion. But I think that religion cohabitates with Propertarianism as comfortably as does capitalism. BUT LIBERTARIANS DON’T GET A FREE PASS. I’m burning continental philosophy, cosmopolitan philosophy, psychological philosophy (classical liberal), and marxist-socialist-postmodern philosophy on the same pyre. And it is a bonfire unlike any before it. The Ratio-scientific form of argument under Propertarianism (moral realism) is all that remains. Because it is the only moral form of discourse on ethics itself. Everything else is deception, fraud or worse. Burn, baby, burn.

  • Burning Obscurant And Platonic Philosophy On The Pyre Of Deception

    [M]ost of my attacks on a priorism are tests to see if the delta in utility between ratio-empirical and ‘Real’, and aprioristic-deductive and platonic, is sufficient to compel a change in method, but I am clearly dealing with very habituated people, and not giving them enough of a breadcrumb trail. And worse, I’m leading them into a dark and unfamiliar conceptual forest where they don’t want to follow. What do moral men do, when moral intuition fails them? They can’t do much until they learn enough new tools with which to restate their emotional intuitions in different terms now that the old terms are invalidated. Even the best people, who tend to be technologists, conflate general rule, theory, and axiom, into a single utilitarian category. Yet again demonstrating the difference between knowledge of use and knowledge of construction. I suppose I will just keep attacking a priorism as incomplete, and utilitarian, but now also as immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-kantian and cosmopolitan-hermeneutic forms of deception. Part of the revolt against ratio-scientific. Although since I’ve already outed Rothbardian ethics as parasitic, and stated that Misesian praxeology was an error, I suppose that adding that a priorism (or any kantian construct) is immoral obscurantism, and part of the continental-cosmopolitan attack on human reason so loathed by Rand is just a continuation of my criticisms. So libertarianism as constructed, prior to its ratio-scientific expression in Propertarianism, is: a) parasitic b) insufficient for the production of a voluntary polity. c) argumentatively obscurant and immoral d) fails the test of its claims (deducibility of the scope of economics) e) inferior to ratio-scientific method for the accumulation of general rules of human behavior. But with Propertarianism, all of these faults are corrected. Of course people being as simple as they are, and even the best philosophers fairly weak, it’s probably lost that my attack on a priorism is an attempt to delegitimize on the right and libertarian spectrum, the same as I delegitimize on left-postmodern and socialist programs. I can’t kill off the obscurantist deceptions of the left without killing off the same techniques on the libertarian corner of the political spectrum. No matter what corner of the political spectrum one advocates, the prohibition on obscurantism that invalidates the arguments of the others, invalidates one’s own as well. All I have to do with the right is to give them a rational language. Most of what they believe is right in the first place. They just don’t have the ability to talk about it in rational terms – and perhaps once I focus there, I’ll be equally frustrated by their lack of intellectualism and mindless dependence on moral intuition. And perhaps at that point I will have to fight the battle against religion. But I think that religion cohabitates with Propertarianism as comfortably as does capitalism. BUT LIBERTARIANS DON’T GET A FREE PASS. I’m burning continental philosophy, cosmopolitan philosophy, psychological philosophy (classical liberal), and marxist-socialist-postmodern philosophy on the same pyre. And it is a bonfire unlike any before it. The Ratio-scientific form of argument under Propertarianism (moral realism) is all that remains. Because it is the only moral form of discourse on ethics itself. Everything else is deception, fraud or worse. Burn, baby, burn.

  • The Central Problem Of Violence In Human Societies? Or The Central Problem Of Free Riding?

    –“The absence of a workable integrated theory of economics and politics reflects the lack of systematic thinking about the central problem of violence in human societies.”– Violence and Social Orders (Preface).

    [T]he fundamental problem of cooperation is the suppression of free riding. Violence is but one of the many tools used by free riders. Our emphasis on suppressing violence distracts us from the insufficiency of suppressing violence in creating a polity capable of generating wealth in a division of knowledge and labor. Very poor societies manage to prevent violence and theft. What they do not prevent is every other possible means of free riding. The smaller the family size the higher the trust in any polity. But for small family sizes suppression of free riding must be nearly universal. And therefore not only must we possess property rights to allow small families to engage in production, but we must suppress all forms of involuntary transfer to lower the risk enough to do so. (ANF societies are fragile.) By eliminating free riding we obtain trust, and the low transaction costs that come with trust. In seeking to obtain trust, non-aggression is not enough. The source of any liberty was, is, and will always be, the organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms. The reason that democracy, policy and economics are in conflict is the intellectual failure to address the incompatible moral codes of the different demographic groups, and the degree of trust vs demand for intervention, that is expressed by these different groups. As such, western high trust, which is an extension of the absolute nuclear family, democracy, rule of law, and the high economic performance of the few high trust societies, are assumed to be the consequence of democracy. Whereas democracy is a luxury of the high trust society. There is no free lunch. You either accept universal absolute nuclear families and total suppression of free riding in all its forms as a high cost you must bear for prosperity and liberty, or instead, you obtain some variant of every other lower and lowest trust societies on the planet. No way out. Period.

  • The Central Problem Of Violence In Human Societies? Or The Central Problem Of Free Riding?

    –“The absence of a workable integrated theory of economics and politics reflects the lack of systematic thinking about the central problem of violence in human societies.”– Violence and Social Orders (Preface).

    [T]he fundamental problem of cooperation is the suppression of free riding. Violence is but one of the many tools used by free riders. Our emphasis on suppressing violence distracts us from the insufficiency of suppressing violence in creating a polity capable of generating wealth in a division of knowledge and labor. Very poor societies manage to prevent violence and theft. What they do not prevent is every other possible means of free riding. The smaller the family size the higher the trust in any polity. But for small family sizes suppression of free riding must be nearly universal. And therefore not only must we possess property rights to allow small families to engage in production, but we must suppress all forms of involuntary transfer to lower the risk enough to do so. (ANF societies are fragile.) By eliminating free riding we obtain trust, and the low transaction costs that come with trust. In seeking to obtain trust, non-aggression is not enough. The source of any liberty was, is, and will always be, the organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms. The reason that democracy, policy and economics are in conflict is the intellectual failure to address the incompatible moral codes of the different demographic groups, and the degree of trust vs demand for intervention, that is expressed by these different groups. As such, western high trust, which is an extension of the absolute nuclear family, democracy, rule of law, and the high economic performance of the few high trust societies, are assumed to be the consequence of democracy. Whereas democracy is a luxury of the high trust society. There is no free lunch. You either accept universal absolute nuclear families and total suppression of free riding in all its forms as a high cost you must bear for prosperity and liberty, or instead, you obtain some variant of every other lower and lowest trust societies on the planet. No way out. Period.

  • How Much Longer Will You Trust Your Liberty To Your Fellow Man?

    –“Rights” are the terms in which the weak couch their desire for a liberty they have not the might to secure.”–Eli Harman

    [Y]our fellow men and women do not desire liberty. They desires consumption, status, and ease. Liberty requires great expense, revolt against the masses, and constant diligence. The source of liberty is the organize application of violence to deny access to others, that which you have labored to obtain by voluntary means. The left’s irrational utopian vision is no worse than the rothbardian irrational libertarian utopia. Aristocratic egalitarians invented liberty. And the manufactured it with organized violence.

  • How Much Longer Will You Trust Your Liberty To Your Fellow Man?

    –“Rights” are the terms in which the weak couch their desire for a liberty they have not the might to secure.”–Eli Harman

    [Y]our fellow men and women do not desire liberty. They desires consumption, status, and ease. Liberty requires great expense, revolt against the masses, and constant diligence. The source of liberty is the organize application of violence to deny access to others, that which you have labored to obtain by voluntary means. The left’s irrational utopian vision is no worse than the rothbardian irrational libertarian utopia. Aristocratic egalitarians invented liberty. And the manufactured it with organized violence.

  • The Central Object Of The Anarchic Research Program

    [T]he central objective of the anarcho capitalist research program has been how to eliminate the monopoly bureaucracy and its institutionalize parasitism on the population, yet still produce a prosperous social order. In libertarian circles we often refer to this simply as “the problem of social order.” THE CENTRAL THEORY Like marxism, libertarian philosophy is pretty rigorously thought out. By the time we get to Hoppe, it’s a well articulated theory of politics. So the logical errors in libertarianism tend to be complex, not trivial. Most criticisms of libertarianism are naive or irrelevant because libertarian claims are technical, articulated in a formal and technical language, and they are not intuitive or normative claims at all. So without knowledge of the libertarian terminology and it’s arguments, is pretty hard to make a legitimate criticism – and that’s why so many criticisms are not legitimate. DEFINITIONS “NAP: the non-aggression principle. That one will not aggress against the life and property of others.” “Property: (n) Your life, your mind, your body, things you have obtained in trade, and things you have converted to first-use (homesteading).” “Violence: (n) Physical aggression against property.” “Aggression: (n) hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront.” So it’s okay to use violence against aggression. ie: any time you and your property are threatened. And to obtain restitution for your lost property. So, no, the NAP is not a prohibition on violence. It’s a prohibition on the violation of property in which you, yourself, are also your property (that which you must have monopoly of control). Or more accurately, private property functions as an extension of your body and life. (true) and as such violations against your ‘things’ are violations against your body. WHY PROPERTY IS SO IMPORTANT The general theory upon which anarcho capitalism rests, is that a rigid definition of property, and the common law, are sufficient for the formation of a polity. And that monopoly government and its systematic predation due to lack of competition is not necessary. Because the common law is sufficient ‘government’ for an anarchic polity. (This is the legal framework of a migratory herding people, or disasporic traders.) This differs from a high trust agrarian society where the people must organize to prevent others from displacing them from the land. In a landed society, it is necessary for organizations to have leaders, to prevent free riding by those not willing to fight for that land. PROSPERITY AS ‘THE COMMON GOOD” But since trust is an index of productivity, because lack of trust acts as a friction on seizure of opportunity – and particularly on the concentration of capital by future-oriented people – (a form of transaction cost) then high trust is the the greatest social asset a polity can possess in the production of wealth. Property will evolve from trust. Trust evolves from the prevention of free riding. The prevention of free riding evolves from the need to cooperate. THE PROBLEM WITH NAP AND PRIVATE PROPERTY: “TRUST” Private property and a weak state only evolve in high trust societies. But high trust societies are not dependent upon the NAP. They are dependent upon the suppression of free riding. The absolute nuclear family for example, even prohibits free riding by your children. The NAP doesn’t prohibit unethical and immoral actions, so you can’t initiate violence against, say, a blackmailer, or scam artist, or other person who engages in conspiracy. Its a license for predation. Given the high cost of violence and the low cost of unethical and immoral behavior, it’s non-logical to essentially prohibit violence but not prohibit every kind of cheating possible. The NAP operates on the assumption that a high trust society already exists, but actually fosters the destruction of the high trust society. Because high trust societies do not limit ‘property’ wither private or common to the physical. High trust societies prevent free riding, of which private property crime is merely one component. That is why it’s non-rational.