Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Are There Any Absolute Unrestricted Rights?

    RIGHT
    A right is a universal, contractual obligation, reciprocally granted to others by voluntary consent to the agreement of all parties.

    NATURAL RIGHT
    A natural right is a NECESSARY right that we must have in order to form a cooperative division of labor – largely by avoiding violence, fraud, and theft.  The only natural right is property and all other rights derive from that one. Because the only possible rights you can reciprocally grant regardless of circumstances are those that do not require material resources from you:

    1) property rights (safety and freedom of your body, your children, your spouse and your things),

    2) Charity under temporary duress (mutual insurance to the extend of your capacity) 

    3) kindness without material cost (manners that signal safety and that you will respect both 1, and 2.) 

    Since these require no resources from you other than those at your disposal in a temporary emergency, then these are the only rights that all people regardless of condition can grant to others, and they are the only necessary rights in a division of knowledge and labor.

    HUMAN RIGHTS
    A Human RIght as we use the term, a statement of moral ambition.  They are aspirations, because very few things can be both necessary and reciprocally granted.  We call these aspirations rights in an effort to pursuade all governments to implement these aspiration with the force of law, thereby making the aspirations into contractual rights for all people within a polity. 

    The universal declaration of human rights consists almost entirely of derivations of property rights.   Where they do not, they suggest that we must work together to raise people out of poverty (but we cannot stop them from breeding – which is what would achieve it.)

    SUMMARY
    There is a very great difference between what is possible to possess as rights that are guaranteed by others, and those that we desire to have guaranteed by others. If it requires others act, then that is very difficult. If it requires others refrain from acting, that is somewhat easier. In current western governments we ask people to refrain from consumption by taxing them so that others may consume. So far this is the only possible way we have found to solve the problem of inequality of ability and circumstance in solving material disparities, even if immaterial disparities (no fraud theft or violence) are possible without material cost.


    PART II – ANSWERING ALL QUESTIONS ON RIGHTS
    (Added in response to the question: “Yes or No?”

    The problem is the wording of the question. It is either dishonest, misleading or erroneous.  But it is so common that it is worth answering:

    “Are there” is a play on words – a deception.  Are there where? Where are they? if they exist, where are they? If you cannot find them, then how do they exist? How do they come into being? If you can ACT to create  them, then you can make them exist by your actions. If many people act the same way, for some reason, and they require others to act the same way or they will ignore, ostracize or punish them, then that action is called a ‘norm’.

    So, if you say that some rights are required for us to cooperate, or at least, avoid violence, then if we want to cooperate we must act to create those rights. And by our actions, create a habit, that is a norm.

    One of the ways to create a habit is force (law). But most laws are the contractual codification of norms, in order to justify, and clarify, and create equal punishments for, violation of those norms.

    All rights are contract rights.  That contract can be temporary and conditional mutual consent. It can be habit within the group. It can be norm within society. It can be codified with the force of law.

    That some set of normative contract rights are NECESSARY for human life, in order to make cooperation POSSIBLE, is true.  Without some portfolio of property rights it is not possible to develop a division of knowledge and labor. It is not even possible for people to live together in tribes or families.

    That some OTHER set of normative contract rights is ADDITIONALLY necessary if we want to achieve other things in society, we need only develop the means of communicating and enforcing them.

    So, again, the original question is an erroneous play on words. A contract right cannot exist without someone else’s participation in an exchange of rights.  And normative contract rights require most people grant them and that they somehow punish offenders.  And legal rights require that most people have hired specialists (politicians and judges) to specialize in enforcing their legal rights.

    As such, there are  normative contractual rights that are necessary for human life in a polity EVEN IF there is no force of law.  These rights are commonly called NATURAL RIGHTS. Living in the natural world requires that we have them.

    Beyond necessary (natural) contract rights, there are PREFERRED normative contract rights that become possible ONLY because a market society is generating enough excess production through the division of knowledge labor and capital, that it becomes possible to MAINTAIN the norm of natural rights, while granting, conditionally, assuming the resources exist, those PREFERRED contractual rights.  In this case, these PREFERRED rights are not necessarily granted by individuals directly, but through the corporation we call the government, and its members – the bureaucracy. Thus creating a third party, albiet an organizational party, to the contract.

    Pareto efficiency is the idea that you can take some amount of taxes from group A and distribute those funds either directly (good) or via services (bad), to group B, without causing the producers of taxes in group A to stop working, or to slow their working, thereby making the act of taxation counter productive.  And, when, above, I say, that we can gant additional, not necessary, but preferred, contract rights to people, if we can, we are limited in their willingness to maintain the norm of NATURAL contract rights.

    Human (contract) Rights, in the sense that they have been written as a document called the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights,  include both NECESSARY and PREFERRED contract rights.  The additional rights that are preferred, are preferred because conditions must exist to make them possible, and those conditions are greater than any individual can grant to any other individual. Therefore human rights are a political, governmental, and legal contract right.

    The only necessary rights are property rights: Life, body, action, time, and property. Which means avoiding theft and violence.

    The necessary rights for the high trust society also appear to include (a) prohibition against fraud (fraud by misrepresentation), (b) requirement for fully informed symmetry of information in any exchange (fraud by omission) (c) warranty as a defense against fraud and asymmetry, (d) requirement of action to earn profit, (e) prohibition against free-riding, privatization (corruption), profit by impediment.  The net of these rules is that all exchanges are voluntary and that all competition takes place only in the market for goods and services.

    I believe that this answers all questions on the cause and difference between rights as contract rights, (necessary) natural rights,  and (preferred) human rights, and how they can be used as temporary (truce), normative (culture), and legal (political), and economic (positive) contractual rights.

    I could edit this a bit. But it is very close to the final word on rights as we understand them.

    https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-absolute-unrestricted-rights

  • Can Socialism/marxism/communism Work Without The Forced Coercion Of The Productive And The Abrogation Of Private Property?

    You are getting terrible answers here, and your question is a bit confusing. So lets clarify terms a bit first, and see if we can get you a decent response:

    1) Socialism is defined as the state ownership of property, and central management of production and distribution.

    2) Communism is the absence of private property.

    Which is why your question seems odd. Instead I think  you mean ‘socialistic’ which is what we have in westen democracies today:

    3) Democratic redistributive socialism is private control of property with heavy progressive taxation of profits. This is what we do in most countries today. It preserves both the ability of individuals to conduct economic calculation and the incentives necessary for them to act in concert to fulfill the desires of others for purely selfish reasons.  THe general argument is predicated on the idea of Pareto Efficiency: that you can take something from someone and give it to something else, as long as it does not make him worse off.  Which in political terms means that the individual does not lose his incentive to produce at the same level as he does prior to the theft of his property by the government for redistribution to others.   The logic of this is that for businesses to grow and expand, consumers must have money to spend and that more additional money is made when they spend it, and so, at least in the end result, everyone is always getting better over time.  … I will not follow the entire economic cycle here but in theory and practice, to a limited extent, it is not a bad idea even if it feels immoral to many of us.

    WHY THE SOCIALIST NON-ECONOMY DOES NOT WORK

    1) Prices are an information system that tells people what they need to do to satisfy the needs of others.

    2) Without prices it is impossible for humans to plan the production of complex goods.

    3) Without prices people cannot have the information needed to have the incentives to engage in productive activity.

    4) any attempt to use computers and static means of production would be forced in to autarkic production (a need to be totally self sustaining) by relative decrease in productivity, followed by constant impoverishment (See Cuba).

    It does not work outside of the family, and only works within the family, because of parental dictatorship, and our instincts for consanguineous cooperation and care-taking.

    The world has abandoned both communism and socialism, and has assumed highly redistributive consumer capitalism   Which is ‘socialistic’ but not technically socialist.  This maintains prices, and incentives, and the ability to plan complex production while taking as much profit as possible from producers without destroying incentives.

    It appears that outside of the west, most countries have or will, adopt totalitarian consumer capitalism, which in practice, in China for example, is an oligarchy running major state industries and finance, and redistribution in the form of easy credit and public services to ‘everyone else’.   This seems to be the pattern. It is not any different from what we have in the USA,  it’s just more obvious.

    But no, since communism is the abandonment of private property, no it is not possible, ever, under any circumstance, which is why it’s been abandoned.

    Socialism cannot exist either because it is not possible for people to operate an economy without money, prices and property, becasue neigher economic calculation nor incentives can exist.

    But that has not stopped the desire for it.  Any more than people have stopped the desire for the absurdity of divinities and afterlife.  These ideas are a religious need, a spiritual need, in many people.  SO this is why they have turned to the religion of Postmodernism as the newest reformation of socialism.

    POSTMODERNISM

    In response to the total failure of the Communist and Socialist agendas, both in theory and in practice, most of the left intellectuals have adopted Postmodernism which is where the idea that

    Forgive the long quote here in exchange for its value:

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.  Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.” – Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (2004)


    COMMUNISM->SOCIALISM ->POSTMODERNISM ARE RELIGIONS

    “Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism). Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism). Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation). Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).” – Hicks.

    CHOMSKY IS THE ONLY LEFT PHILOSOPHER
    Because he has mastered the art of using untrue language.  That is his contribution to the new religion of Postmodernism. He invented linguistic tricks that could deceive human beings.

    Cheers
    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-Socialism-Marxism-Communism-work-without-the-forced-coercion-of-the-productive-and-the-abrogation-of-private-property

  • What Examples Are There Of Libertarianism In Practice Failing?

    There have been very few ‘libertarian’ societies, and those that we have examples are are actually under the protection of some larger entity (iceland/denmark). 

    Various small seasteading efforts have been started.  But they have all been failures because there is insufficient economic incentive and value to these places.

    Libertarianism in the formal sense, was developed by Rothbard as an ideological resistance movement. As were most of the liberty movements of the postwar and great society periods.  I am not sure it’s arguable that it was not in practice an institutional model but an argument against institutional models.

    Libertarianism, has been an ideological failure because his ethics were intolerable to too much of the population, just as Marxism, libertarianism’s opposite, is intolerable to most of the population.

    The anarcho capitalist research program is attempting to find solutions to the problem of monopoly bureaucracy’s deterministic recreation of the totalitarian state.  As a research program it’s been fruitful. And it is arguable that it’s possible to create a Hoppeian Private government.  Even if not possible to create an anarchic society.

    It may be possible to replace the bureaucratic monopoly state at some future date if we complete this intellectual exercise.

    But at present, prospects are dim, because the intellectual work has not been sufficiently completed that it presents a viable social and economic alternative to the nation-state.

    Curt

    https://www.quora.com/What-examples-are-there-of-libertarianism-in-practice-failing

  • If You Have Multiple Ideas As Solution To A Specific Problem, How Do You Analyse And Evaluate Them To Identify The Best One For Execution?

    The one that is easiest to sell to a market easiest to extract profits from.

    It’s not rocket science.

    DO NOT SPREAD YOURSELF THIN.

    https://www.quora.com/If-you-have-multiple-ideas-as-solution-to-a-specific-problem-how-do-you-analyse-and-evaluate-them-to-identify-the-best-one-for-execution

  • What Are Some Real Life Examples Of Anarchy On A Large Scale?

    There are none that involve a division of knowledge and labor.  The reason being that human beings are extremely hostile to involuntary transfers, and most humans perceive price competition via the local market – as members of an extended family – as involuntary transfer. They percieve quality variation as acceptable but not price competition.   They are correct in this perception, however. This involuntary transfer creates a virtuous cycle of innovation and price reduction, and greater participation in the market by consumers because of it, so we sanction this involuntary transfer by casting it as a virtue.

    Secondly, increasing the size of a market requires shared investment. People need a means of making this shared investment.  However, people will not make a shared investment if it is open to privatization. Governmnets have the ability to forcibly extract taxes from the market to use to construct infrastructure (largely, city walls and soldiers to defend them) as well as misuse tax money.  But they also have the ability to create legislative directions, which we call laws, to forbid privatization and free riding of these investments. As such these institutions (governments) make it easier to invest in commons (infrastructure) than would be possible without them, due to the pervasive nature of human free-riding, privatization and corruption.

    It is arguable that taxes (fees) of some minimum amount are legitimate fees for preventing free riding on the commons.  However, it has proven very difficult to control the expansion of the commons and the government, and therefore taxes.  As such governments have become instruments of rent-seeking and corruption every time humans have invented them for the purpose of avoiding free-riding and privatization.

    This should be the correct, or at least, most correct answer that we currently know how to provide to the near absence of anarchic social structures: to prevent free riding, which all humans find morally objectionable.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-real-life-examples-of-anarchy-on-a-large-scale

  • Fascism: What Are The Indicators Of A Fascist State?

    Your question is worded oddly. One could define a Fascist state. We can enumerate the properties of fascist states.  By use of the term ‘indicators’ you imply that either this convention isn’t something you’re familiar with, or that you are trying to establish the properties of a state that describe a trend.  If the former, then that’s possible. If the latter, it is very difficult to argue that any given policy is fascist versus a simple example of retaliatory trade policy.

    Fascism is the pursuit of Autarky (economic and resource indepenence) under a corporation called the state, which represents an extended tribe of people (nation) by direct intervention with industry and trade to give preference to autarkic exchanges despite pricing signals that would normally instruct members of any given industry to operate efficiently by buying by price alone.

    Fascism is merger of the state and industry such that industry adopts autarkic pricing, buying within the country, rather than market pricing.  This is what it means. That this political agenda has been accomplished by all manner of propaganda is not material, since all political efforts are accomplished by propaganda and some appeal to nationalism. People attach a great deal of emotional load to the term that is not relevant.  So it is easy to fail to understand this strategy.

    https://www.quora.com/Fascism-What-are-the-indicators-of-a-fascist-state

  • Who Are More Likely To Respect Animal Rights: Conservatives Or Liberals?

    Conservative view of man’s relation to nature is heroic:
    That nature is ours to modify for our benefit.
    That nature is capricious and something we must pacify for our safety.
    That the purpose of man’s life is to leave the world better for having lived in it.
    This is an heroic view of man that is as ancient as the indo-european peoples.

    Meaning:
    (a) animals do not have ‘rights’ – this is an absurdity – they are not human. In conservatism (which means “european aristocratic egalitarianism”). Even humans must ‘earn’ rights – which is why we take them away if they misbehave.  Animals can’t earn rights. (perhaps dogs to some minor degree.)
    (b) that we should care for animals because we desire to, because our world is better to live in if we have them. True. This is the logical reasoning, not ‘rights’.
    (c) that disregard for animals that we have normatively chosen to care for, and which are under our control,
    (d) that laziness in caring for animals is likely laziness in caring for people. True.
    (e) that cruelty to animals is likely cruelty to humans – and therefore you are unfit to live among humans. True.

    Unfortunately, this is an argument to NORMS: demonstrating the human character necessary to possess ‘rights’.  Conservatives place extremely high value on norms. Progressives do not.  The progressive movement is largely an attack on conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) norms. And the progressive movement has managed to, at least in education and other major areas of life, discredit norms.  And therefore the progressive movement has lost the ability to market policy that requires adherence to norms.  And therefore has, out of necessity, used the specious argument of ‘rights’, because it is the only means of justifying legal action that they have available to them.

    Of course, what may not be obvious is that:
    (a) it is not possible for animals to possess rights – a right is something that can be reciprocally granted and animals cannot conceive of this (except perhaps for domesticated dogs..)
    (b) that the word “right” is an attempt to load, or frame, animals anthropomorphically. in order to misrepresent the normative utility of protecting animals as a resource, as one open to legal rather than normative control.  In other words, it’s common marketing fraud.
    (c) that caretaking, even anthropomorpized caretaking, provides women with oxcytocin reactions, and that many females are addicted to this reaction. It is not rational. It is drug addiction. It’s just relatively harmless drug addiction. So our political policy is being driven by logically confused drug addicts using a deceptive marketing campaign, not reason.  In which case we would simply sell off the management of wild animals to private firms who would specialize in it and figure out how to make it profitable (the way we have with deer hunting in america).
    (d) that the female psyche evolved, and cooperation evolved, as a means of controlling alphas by gossip, complaint and excitement, to motivate the non-alpha males to organize against, and punish or kill the alphas, so that the females could control their own breeding rather than be the mere victims of alphas.  And that there is a significant correlation between the female members of the animal rights movement and their reproductive status.
    (e) That the anti-fur movement is absurd, and counter to the benefit of animals and man. It is a renewable resource. It encourages the protection of the species. It is inexpensive.  It is excellent protection against the cold, and it’s beautiful.   This same argument applies to hunting. And to wild animals. Because if wild animals were ‘owned’ rather than a ‘commons’ owners would protect them far better than governments do – just like we do with domesticated animals.

    This is a fairly damning critique of REASONING USED by the animal rights movement.  It is not however a critique of the conservative normative proscription. 

    The conservative (aristocratic egalitarian) proscription is that if you do not care for animals as if they are the commons that they are, and a commons that we have assumed responsibilty for from nature, that you have not EARNED the right from other humans to administer that commons on their behalf, and therefore they will withdraw your rights, which they reciprocally grant you, because you are unfit to live with rights, among others, who have them.

    Conservatives are rational but their moral code is ancient and they speak of it in metaphorical terms not suitable for an era where scientific language has all but replaced metaphor.  And this is why I write philosophy – to repair conservatism (aristocratic egalitarianism) by articulating it rationally.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-are-more-likely-to-respect-animal-rights-conservatives-or-liberals

  • Would Creating A World Citizen Help Or Make Sense?

    Who is your insurer of last resort?  THat’s what citizenship is.

    https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Would-creating-a-world-citizen-help-or-make-sense

  • What Are Some Real Life Examples Of Anarchy On A Large Scale?

    There are none that involve a division of knowledge and labor.  The reason being that human beings are extremely hostile to involuntary transfers, and most humans perceive price competition via the local market – as members of an extended family – as involuntary transfer. They percieve quality variation as acceptable but not price competition.   They are correct in this perception, however. This involuntary transfer creates a virtuous cycle of innovation and price reduction, and greater participation in the market by consumers because of it, so we sanction this involuntary transfer by casting it as a virtue.

    Secondly, increasing the size of a market requires shared investment. People need a means of making this shared investment.  However, people will not make a shared investment if it is open to privatization. Governmnets have the ability to forcibly extract taxes from the market to use to construct infrastructure (largely, city walls and soldiers to defend them) as well as misuse tax money.  But they also have the ability to create legislative directions, which we call laws, to forbid privatization and free riding of these investments. As such these institutions (governments) make it easier to invest in commons (infrastructure) than would be possible without them, due to the pervasive nature of human free-riding, privatization and corruption.

    It is arguable that taxes (fees) of some minimum amount are legitimate fees for preventing free riding on the commons.  However, it has proven very difficult to control the expansion of the commons and the government, and therefore taxes.  As such governments have become instruments of rent-seeking and corruption every time humans have invented them for the purpose of avoiding free-riding and privatization.

    This should be the correct, or at least, most correct answer that we currently know how to provide to the near absence of anarchic social structures: to prevent free riding, which all humans find morally objectionable.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-real-life-examples-of-anarchy-on-a-large-scale

  • Political Science: What Is A Minimalist State?

    Minimal is a subjective term depending upon the perceived necessity of the person making the judgement.  That said, by using the term ‘state’ not government, it is possible to list what is the minimum requirement.

    1) A means of controlling the ability to define rules of behavior in a territory. Usually stated as a territorial monopoly of violence.  Generally this requires warriors. (always, actually)
    2) Some form of leadership – one to many.
    3) A bureaucracy to enforce decisions and to police resistance.
    4) Technically, writing for the purpose of keeping records and inventories.
    5)  A means of collecting revenue that will pay for the administrators.
    6) A set of norms that people obey under the threat of ostracization from opportunities that keeps the cost of administration down to tolerable levels.
    7) A division of labor.
    8) A population

    Not positive. Need to think a bit.  But I’m pretty sure that’s the minimum for a state.   A state is different from a government.   A state is a bad thing. A government can be a good thing.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Science-What-is-a-minimalist-state