Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • What Are “positive Rights”?

    I’ve been asked to comment on this topic.   I don’t think I can add much to what has been said here. But I will try to add some precision:

    A right is a thing that all people can grant to each other. Otherwise the term has no meaning.  We cannot grant each other positives. We lack the resources to grant resources to others.  We can however, equally forgo opportunities for satisfying our self interest.  In effect, we can all suffer deprivations of opportunity even if we cannot suffer the transfer of resources (money).

    But for clarity: We cannot make laws either.  Laws emerge.  We can only issue orders.  We grant orders legitimacy by calling them analogies to laws. Legislatures issue orders.  Laws emerge from observation of human actions. We cannot make laws, only recognize them.

    Likewise, we cannot make positive rights.  We can only make redistributive commitments – forcible transfer from one group to another.  We grant these goals legitimacy by calling them analogies to rights.

    But neither commands nor redistributions are what they claim to be by analogy.  They are what they are, and can be nothing else: commands and thefts.

    The rest is just gilding a sin in flowery language.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-positive-rights

  • A Definition Of Libertarianism – Draft Two : From Intuitive Sentiment To Institutional Framework

    Libertarianism lih-ber-tair’-ee-un-ih’-zum (noun)1) SENTIMENT: A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above the competing sentiments of care-taking and order — which are the respective priorities of left and right. 2) POLITICAL BIAS: A range of political biases that express the precedence for liberty as the freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore maximizing the self organizing civic virtues and norms. 3) ECONOMIC BIAS: An economic philosophy that seeks to maximize human prosperity by increasing the opportunity for entrepreneurial trial and error by advocating the inviolability of individual property rights, free trade, and sound money. 4) POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: An explicitly articulated political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, where property has been obtained by the processes of homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange, which are necessary for peaceful human cooperation because they facilitate the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we can use to determine our actions. 5) INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK: An framework of political institutions that seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private formal institutions and public informal institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition. libertarian lih-ber-tair’-ee-un An individual who demonstrates a preference for one or more of the definitions of Libertarianism.

  • Trying To Define Libertarianism In One Hundred Words. (And Failing)

    LIBERTARIANISM:1) A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above care-taking and order. 2) A range of political biases that express that precedence as freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore a reliance on the maximization of self organizing civic virtues and norms. 3) An institutional framework that is reliant upon the sole principle of several property that has been obtained by homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange. The result of which maximizes peaceful human cooperation by facilitating the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we use to determine our actions. 4) An explicit political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, and seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition. (138 words)

  • Startup Skills Vs Startup Ideas?

    I’ve started eight companies, invested in about an equal number, and pitched more times than I can remember or count.

    The idea only matters if other investors are following it.  Investors are sheep. They follow trends in business ideas because trends mean over-investment that they can participate in.  Instead of ideas, they care about the returns on the idea. And most entrepreneurs spend too much time on their idea and not enough on  how they will market, sell, distribute and create their product and service, and who they can exit to if they succeed.

    Ideas are cheap, and plentiful. They are everywhere. The problem is not coming up with an idea. it’s coming up with an idea that customers will pay for and which provides an exit strategy.

    After you have that idea, the next problem is execution. Can your team demonstrate an ability to execute by getting customers, and producing results. The most common problem I come across is confusing learning with producing results.  No one will pay for learning. That’s just a cost. They pay for products and services. For “deliverables.” Customers and investors included.

    And then there is  the problem of cost.  Can you execute and create enough profit that an investor can see a way out, by tripling their money in three years?Or do you not expect to need an investor?

    I’ve probably answered this question a thousand times in my career, but people keep asking it in the futile hope that someone will provide them with an alternative answer.  But that won’t happen. 

    And, using facebook is an interesting analogy.  They started by making a dating tool for exclusive universities, and ended with one of the worse IPO scams in recent history.It’s an outlier.  Outliers don’t teach us anything. It’s the thousand companies that follow a fairly standard path that we learn from.

    https://www.quora.com/Startup-skills-vs-startup-ideas

  • Startup Skills Vs Startup Ideas?

    I’ve started eight companies, invested in about an equal number, and pitched more times than I can remember or count.

    The idea only matters if other investors are following it.  Investors are sheep. They follow trends in business ideas because trends mean over-investment that they can participate in.  Instead of ideas, they care about the returns on the idea. And most entrepreneurs spend too much time on their idea and not enough on  how they will market, sell, distribute and create their product and service, and who they can exit to if they succeed.

    Ideas are cheap, and plentiful. They are everywhere. The problem is not coming up with an idea. it’s coming up with an idea that customers will pay for and which provides an exit strategy.

    After you have that idea, the next problem is execution. Can your team demonstrate an ability to execute by getting customers, and producing results. The most common problem I come across is confusing learning with producing results.  No one will pay for learning. That’s just a cost. They pay for products and services. For “deliverables.” Customers and investors included.

    And then there is  the problem of cost.  Can you execute and create enough profit that an investor can see a way out, by tripling their money in three years?Or do you not expect to need an investor?

    I’ve probably answered this question a thousand times in my career, but people keep asking it in the futile hope that someone will provide them with an alternative answer.  But that won’t happen. 

    And, using facebook is an interesting analogy.  They started by making a dating tool for exclusive universities, and ended with one of the worse IPO scams in recent history.It’s an outlier.  Outliers don’t teach us anything. It’s the thousand companies that follow a fairly standard path that we learn from.

    https://www.quora.com/Startup-skills-vs-startup-ideas

  • How Sound Is The Process Of Providing Government Stimulus Based On Keynesian Economics In A Country With A Large Fiscal Deficit?

    Bertil Hatt answers the question correctly. But I think I”ll try to add an answer to WHY that trust is necessary.

    I tend to criticize Keynesian advocates daily, Krugman included, for arguing under the pretense that people do not understand the Keynesian model and the value of Keynesian stimulus.  It’s not that they don’t understand.  Its that the act of providing such a stimulus rewards and expands the government and its influence.  And the citizens have become polarized, into the the masculine hierarchcal model (conservative aristocracy) and the feminine communal model (social democracy), and no longer trust the government to spend in favor of all, but in favor of their cultural constituency.

    Small homogenous cultures tend to be redistributive.  One of the sillly myths, is that 350M americans of various value systems can be governed as are 10M northern european protestant germanics.  Majority rule assists us in selecting fiscal priorities when our interests and values are the same.  But as the values of a country become heterogeneous through immigration, or the breakdown of the nuclear family that allows women to return to their communal state of bearing children but asking others to pay for them, we render majority rule impossible. Because now we are not selecting priorities for the use of scarce resources, and generating laws to prevent privatization of those investment ‘commons’, but we are instead, generating laws to advance one system of moral codes at the expense of another, and using money from one group to achieve what is amoral to them.

    This is why democratic government is limited to homogenous cultural entities.  And why the market serves us across heterogeneous entities.  Our institutions of majority rule are not competent to solve this problem of heterogeneous values.

    So in a heterogeneous state, the Keynesian stimulus only works if the government can spend on investments that do not favor one constituency or another. And that is impossible.

    https://www.quora.com/How-sound-is-the-process-of-providing-government-stimulus-based-on-Keynesian-economics-in-a-country-with-a-large-fiscal-deficit

  • Is There Any Independent, Third-party Research On The Fiscal Grievance Of Catalonia With Spain?

    Joe: that’s not what the numbers mean.
    Catalonia represents 14% of the population and pays 22% of the taxes.  The tax rate is both unfair, and harmful, since it is the one region of spain that might form an innovative industrial heartland, in southern Europe. Furthermore,  Catalonias speak a slightly different language and have a distinct culture and have tried repeatedly to gain independence from spain, only succeeding for a brief period.

    Federalism only works if a culture is homogenous.  That is the problem for the US, and for Europe,

    https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-independent-third-party-research-on-the-fiscal-grievance-of-Catalonia-with-Spain

  • KRUGMAN Straw Man Of The Day : iPhone 5 Shows We Are All Keynesians?

    Krugman’s straw man of the day uses discussions about the impact of the iPhone 5 release on the economy to suggest we are all Keynesians, and that government should spend more money.

    [callout] [/callout]

    But all actions have costs. And Americans have decided that the cost of funding expansion of government influence, power, and corruption is so high, that government stimulus is even worse then continuing recession. So, while Americans may understand, within reason, the value of stimulus. Unlike Keynesian economists, American’s also understand the cost of the expansionist state. And they have had quite enough of it. Unlike certain Nobel laureates.

  • SACRED – “SACREDNESS” AS A COMMONS

    SACRED – “SACREDNESS” It is very hard to build the concept of ‘sacred’ into the values of a population. External threat, common strife, shared ambition, education, and indoctrination all can achieve it. Sacred concepts are a form of The Commons. They are a community property. And a community property, whether real land, built capital, formal institution, or cherished narrative, may be used by all, but not consumed by any. Conservatives invest in a large portfolio of such commons, and as such treat them as sacred. Conservatism is, by and large, a government of norms. It is intrinsically anarchic, but not intrinsically libertarian. And as such, ‘Sacredness’ is pervasive in conservative culture. Rothbardian Libertarians disavow the existence of a commons, other than the institution of property itself – a seeming contradiction. But the purpose of that denial is to forbid the existence of a state which must arbitrate the use of such commons. Hoppeian Libertarians restored the commons into libertarianism, while prohibiting any commons that consists of an organizations of human beings- thereby forbidding the existence of a state, while allowing for the existence of contractual, private government. Social democrats treat all property as a commons, and the means of distributing it as a commons. But they treat nothing as sacred other than the emotional predisposition to prevent harm and express care-taking. Sacredness is an act of self denial, and progressives avoid deprivation at all costs. As such, all forms of property other than the current-consensus for the purpose of reducing conflict, are absent. With that absence must also go the sacred. Under this analysis, Sacredness is not exclusive to conservatism. It is only that conservatism treats moral capital – forgoing opportunities, and building moral capital in the population – as of high value, Rothbardian libertarianism of little to none, and to progressives, an antithesis of their world view. This is somewhat confusing unless we take into account that those with predispositions toward libertarianism and progressivism are searching for experience and stimulation. While conservatives are searching for improving the excellence of established themes. This is why conservative art tends to be illustrative and progressive art tends to be experiential. Contrary to popular, studied, and academic belief, the debate as to whether the enormous power of fiat money eliminates the need for sacredness – forms of property we call norms which require self denial – is not over. Fiat money can be used Conservatism is not so much about the seen as unseen. Its pretense is a form of respect of the sacred. And the sacred consists of common property that they pay for with constant acts of self denial. Having paid this high price for the commons, it is no wonder why they object to the consumption of it by progressives, or the destruction of its institutions by Rothbardians.

  • A Critique Of Jason Brennan’s Thought Experiment: Just War Is A Utilitarian And Contractual, Not Absolute Moral Concept

    Some Thought Experiments Involving Assassination by JASON BRENNAN 1. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this one innocent person.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that innocent person? 2. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this Mafia don, a criminal who has himself killed many people and who plans to kill many more.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that Mafia don? 3. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill the president.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 4. Suppose the evil demon possesses the president. The evil demon, in the guise of the president, plans to invade a foreign country. Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the demon-possessed president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 5. Suppose there is no evil demon. However, suppose the president, though not possessed by an evil demon, acts just like the possessed president in 4. The president appears before you and says, “I plan to invade a foreign country.” Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president?

    Jason, 1) Humans war. They always have and always will. It is impossible to resolve all conflicts by peaceful means. 2) The demon and the president are participants in a war. 3) As participants in the war they are outside daily civil legal and moral prohibitions we have constructed for peaceful interactions: our prohibition on violence does not apply. War revokes the prohibition on non violence. That is the purpose and point of demarcation of ‘war’. 4) Moral rules are general rules. They are a shortcut that allows us to propagate contractual terms which help us reduce our error in calculating property transfers when they are beyond our perception and knowledge. Moral rules are not abstract truths. The confusion is created by the priority one gives to the genetic structural categories of family, tribe, and nation, versus the egalitarian structure limited to the categories of the individual and humanity. Much religious content seeks to extend the familial category to the universal as a means of creating an opposition to the state. And approaching questions of property as questions of morality is an artifact of applying religious techniques that seek to simplify complexity into emotionally accessible social rules, to what are practical contractual constructs the articulation of which is too complicated for general use. 5) There is is no longer a genetic composition to war – the need to fight other tribes for genes to persist – which necessitates one’s participation in tribal war. Wars are now, and have been for a long time, conducted for economic interests, even if those economic interests apply only to the costly norms, status signals, property rights portfolios, and political systems that vary between groups. Therefore the individual is free to choose sides. 6) As free to choose sides, one may calculate his interests and those interests of those with whom he shares interests, and determine if he is benefitting or harming those with whom he shares interests. And if it is in his interest and the interest of those with whom he shares interest, then he may act to kill the demon/president/minister/general or not at his will. Propertarianism is correct: all human ethical and political statements can be reduced to property rights, and done so without contrivance. That is because all morals and all human moral feelings, are expressons of property rights when property rights are articulated such that they fully encompass the entirety of those things which humans treat as property. It is hard to do this topic justice in short form. But hopefully this is enough of a sketch to illustrate the problems of both moral parlor games, and treating war as other than a utilitarian construct. So the thought experiment misleads the reader with false premises. a) Argued on abstract and loaded absolute moral grounds, not articulated contractual grounds, in order to mislead the reader. b) Moral statements are general contractual rules for peaceful mutual exchange. c) And war by definition is outside of that contractual environment. d) ‘Just War’ is not an abstract moral truth but a contratual proposition between parties who seek to limit their own costs (See Kagan). So, the thought device is dependent upon the error of the common parlor game, in which one which poses false dichotomies in order to confuse the participants into thinking (like the train-lever parable) that morals are absolute rules foiled by specific extremes, rather than that morals are general statements of property rights loaded with emotional content so that they propagate more easily. The error here is confusing a statement of abstract and absolute truth, with one of utilitarian contract. The first is the meme. The second is a fact. Sometimes we must take risks. Otherwise, we risk also confusing convenience with conviction.