Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • In The Us, Is It Realistic To Try To Achieve Labor/progressive Goals In Businesses Through More Active Shareholder Participation Rather Than Government Regulation?

    Being a shareholder is like being a voter. It’s more symbolic than meaningful. Companies of any size are affected either by a) threats to the brand perception by customers or b) threats at regulation.  These two are more effectives strategies than minority share ownership.

    IMHO there is a trending body of thought that suggests shareholders are not owners but speculative lenders. The recent Apple dividend distribution was caused by economists blogging and publicly decrying the company’s hoard.  This caused the company to issue dividends defensively.  And the powerlessness (and frankly, lack of utility) of shareholders was part of that discussion.  Lynn Stout has written a book “The Shareholder Value Myth” and I think it accurately represents the mythology around shareholder ownership.

    https://www.quora.com/In-the-US-is-it-realistic-to-try-to-achieve-labor-progressive-goals-in-businesses-through-more-active-shareholder-participation-rather-than-government-regulation

  • What Is The Libertarian Position On Laws About Filming Up Women’s Skirts Without Their Consent?

    Anon is correct.

    The reason that someone can violate another’s privacy is because there are insufficient property rights due to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in ‘public’ areas.

    However, we don’t need to get that complicated.  If all citizens of a village are shareholders, and shareholders vote to create a contractual obligation that we don’t look up women’s skirts, then there is nothing that violates ‘libertarian’ principles.  It’s a private corporation.  The shareholders determined the rules.  The people can voluntarily go to that village or not.

    The problems for libertarians are a) that we don’t have the right of exclusion (we can’t randomly forbid people from shopping malls or city streets), and b) we don’t have the right of secession, which means we can’t set up our own rules for our own neighborhoods.  This amounts to the government causing and subsidizing bad behavior.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-libertarian-position-on-laws-about-filming-up-womens-skirts-without-their-consent

  • What Are The Best Examples Of “magical Libertarian Thinking About Markets”?

    I am not sure that there is anything magical.  I think that libertarians prefer to pay one set of consequences, and statists to pay different consequences.  A libertarian is perfectly OK with it taking ten years to solve a problem. A statist isn’t. A libertarian would rather have to battle an irresponsible corporation using the market than an irresponsible government that is outside the market. And in the end, that’s really the only difference.  

    I have been debating these topics for a long time and I am pretty sure that it all boils down to that distinction.  The libertarians are right that the state creates monopolies, and that most of the problems we face are the product of government, and that the government exacerbates those problems. The left is right in that the market works slowly and that there are consequences to relying upon it exclusively.  Some people seek to define the best balance of market and state. Others seek the extremes.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-examples-of-magical-libertarian-thinking-about-markets

  • A Note To Jonathan Haidt: An Explanation Of Elite Conservative Strategy Since Reagan

    Jonathan Haidt first attacks republicans then rescinds it. I try to put conservative strategy in context. And in that context it’s quite simple. It’s an extension of the tactic used against world communism: “Resist until they go bankrupt.” If you understand this strategy everything the conservatives and Republicans do makes complete sense. Everything. Jonathan, Very interesting post, and equally interesting comments. One commenter above writes that you (Jonathan) should perhaps seek to understand conservative elite theory. (People like me.) The conservative intellectuals succeeded in defeating world communism and socialism through a variety of military, political, economic, and intellectual tactics. But conservatives failed to come up with a strategy for defeating democratic redistributive socialism and the secular progressive attack on the meritocratic hierarchical conservative society. Due to this failure, the libertarians, who are explicitly economic in their strategy, took over leadership of the anti-collectivism, and whenever possible, the conservatives adopted the libertarian economic and political program. But about the time of Reagan, conservative thought leaders looked at the demographic data and determined that the program of expanding statism would win out over time. So, the conservatives abandoned their belief that they could gain a majority and keep control of the state, or even defend themselves against it. And instead, they increased militarism, worked to increase home ownership, and tried to rekindle entrepreneurship rather than government as the central narrative behind western success. They then allied with the capitalist class to attempt to bankrupt the state before european style nanny state could develop. This was consistent with the approach to communism: “Just resist them and wear them out. They will eventually fail because their concept of an economy is unsustainable.” The conservative battle against the state is simply the conservative tactic against world communism replayed. It is perhaps useful to note that the conservative argument against central planning, urban planning, welfare disincentives, laxity on crime and punishment, the social and economic impact of the dissolution of the institution of marriage, as well as the problem of the ponzi financing strategy of social programs (rather than the Singapore model of forced and subsidized savings) were all correct. The conservative vision of hubristic man and economic incentives is more accurate a world view than the liberal egalitarian ideal. And while it is not that we cannot use the ideas of both sides. It is that progressive desires must be accomplished through conservative means: retaining the relationship between cause, effect and incentives. The USA, as a set of political institutions, faces the multicultural problem that faces all empires. It currently must cope with the combination of a)”The Demands Of Empire” that give the state greater scope than just the nation + b)”Nine Nations Of North America” which represent geographic differences in culture + c)”Racial Self-Preference in Association, and Differences In Ability” + d)”Gender Biases” + e) The class exaggerating effect of the extraordinary economic advantage of having an IQ greater than 105 in the information economy. All of these biases exist within a set of political institutions designed to resolve conflicts in priority between property owning males with homogenous norms. It is not possible to resolve conflicts over ends using decision making by majority rule. In the market we cooperate on means and are ignorant of one another’s ends. In majority rule government, there are winners and losers because we argue over ends. Majority rule must (as Federalist papers 10 stated) lead to extra-political resolution of conflict between groups with such mutually exclusive goals. Liberals slant toward the female reproductive strategy (the largest number of human births with the most equal experience) and the conservatives slant toward the male reproductive strategy (the most competitive tribe with the best people in charge of it.) This level of conflict over instinctual preference will not be resolved by the liberal desire to use our instituions of majority rule to suppress the instincts of the other side any more than conservatives would succeed in encouraging liberals to adopt conservative norms. For this reason, something has to give. Either demographics have to play out (it’s possible), or the federal government has to devolve (unlikely without catastrophic military or economic causes) or we will have to develop new institutions that allow us to federate while pursuing opposing social ends (Just as unlikely). But it’s also just as likely that we will lose our high trust society as groups seek extra-political means of status seeking (like Mediterranean’s and Eastern Europeans, and Russians.) And if we lose that we will also lose our risk taking – which is why we’re a wealthy economy. Risk taking creates innovation. But the USA is too big and too diverse ann empire to persist as we have known it. Classical liberalism is a means of governance for a small state or a small federation. Not an empire. And the USA is an empire. The Classical mutli-house model did not work for the british empire, and it will not work for the american empire. So while I believe you have finally supplied the social sciences with the language by which to understand political conflcits I do not believe that the conflict is resolvable. People under Russian and Chinese socialism developed ‘black markets’ for everything. People under majority rule who have opposing interests will develop extra-political ‘black markets’ for power. They will circumvent the political institutions to achieve their desired ends. The state will attempt to preserve itself by increasing control, which will only expand the black markets. The liberals circumvented the constitution, and the conservatives circumvent the state apparatus. There is no solution here without changes to our institutions. In government, big is bad and small is good. The city state and a mobile population allow the greatest diversity and freedom. So the problem we have is finding an institutional solution to that equilibrium: allowing federation of some things but not federation of norms.

  • Why Are There Very Few Conservative Jewish People?

    I’ll give you the underlying answer, even if it might take a bit of contemplation for it to make sense.

    1) Minority peoples tend to be progressive. This has to do with the problem of ‘signaling’ (status) as well as access to opportunity and power. There  is nothing special about jewish progressivism other than they’re an exceptional minority, their exceptionalism is verbally oriented, (and western germanic culture is more technically oriented) so they have more impact on society because of their preference for and dominance in media.  There are plenty of conservative jews here and in Israel.  

    2) Conservatism in the USA, is the remnant of aristocratic agrarian manorialism, coupled with the anglo classical liberal political instituions, under a weak federal government we call ‘the church’.  It is a social and political strategy for a division of powers that can militarily hold land using weak forces. The west had to keep the ‘magian and totalitarian’ east at bay since the time of the Ancient Greeks – maybe earlier. So, Western moral content is structured to hold territory necessary for farming, even against superior numbers. By contrast, Judaism is a dasporic culture of merchants and traders and its moral content does not contain the same prescriptions as does aristocratic christianity (Germanized christianity).  The most obvious of these differences are a) the Bazaar exchange ethic vs the Warrior exchange ethic.  Whereby christians take account of external costs and jews do not.  b) The western concept of warranty is not present in the jewish ethic.  c) western universalism is unique in human history.  Jewish ethics are familial and tribal not universalist. 

    These are long held historical differences in the moral codes of the different societies.  There is some argument as to whether they have some biological basis to them. But that won’t be settled by science for decades yet.  The two societies operate on different principles. They are to some degree symbiotic. 

    You might consider reading Power and Weakness by Kagan. http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/zs…  The weak are generally pacifist ad progressive and the strong are generally expansionist and conservative.  It is a natural human reaction to various circumstances.

    This may be a lot to grasp but these genetic, historical, environmental and strategic differences lead to the different biases between conservative christians and liberal jews.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-very-few-conservative-Jewish-people

  • Stiglitz Joins In On Keynesian Spending In Order To Expand The Oppressive State

    The Keynesian debate promoted by such writers as Krugman, Delong, Thoma, Smith, and Stiglitz is misleading. Human beings are well aware that spending can increase demand, and that demand will improve the economy. The problem is, that we’re also aware of the externalities that are caused by that spending: the increase in government interference in our lives, the expansion of government’s size, the corruption created by the use of the funds, the use of the funds to support one’s opposition, the destruction of our savings, and the near prohibition on the institution of saving. These negative consequences all support the secondary Keynesian objectives: the strong and increasingly egalitarian state. So Keynesians promote spending as much because of it’s externalities as for its impact on the economy. Just as we oppose those externalities because we desire freedom from an oppressive state, even if we must pay a high cost for doing so. The germans resent supporting the greeks, italians and spanish just as much as americans resent supporting their liberal leaning underclasses. And while it may be true that the scale of our economy allows us to print money, that is not to say that each of us could not be more free, more prosperous, more secure and more competitive, as smaller collections of states rather than a continental federation of states oppressed by the coasts. The Keynesian arguments are convincing on first blush. But they are only convincing because in their simplicity they ignore the true costs of government spending – the externalities that come from empowering the state: it is not debt alone that we face. It’s the destruction of meritocracy and the submission to the state. The germans and the americans are right to oppose it.

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Why Are Many Muslim Countries Run By Dictators?

    The Muslim countries were part of the Ottoman empire.  The Ottomans could not modernize for complex reasons, and could not compete with western expansion.

    When the empire fell, the westerners attempted to establish order in the conquered territories, by creating small states. And they promoted leaders in those states.

    Oil has been a strategic necessity in the 20th century and Muslim countries are sitting on it.

    The west was concerned about the expansion of world communism into the Muslim countries and thereby an alliance between those oil producers and Russia and china.  This would have dramatically endangered the west.

    The west attempted successfully to suppress the world communist movement in the Muslim countries by supporting leaders who could hold the popular communist movements at bay, while permitting oil to trade on the market.

    Dictatorship is a natural and common form of government and the idea that it is not is a modern contrivance.  Democracy as we understand it is a luxury that is the product of our technological development. Not the other way around  It is an intellectual mistake to think of it otherwise.  The rest of the world has decided that western democracy is for westerners. THe reason the west is different, and less corrupt, is that we managed to break family bonds of loyalty that are the very reason for existence in the rest of the world. The rest of the world may not achieve our form of democracy because corruption is endemic because they retain the primacy of tribal and familial bonds over that of the collective.

    The USA’s strategy since the second world war has been to prevent the rise of communist and socialist governments until the middle classes in each country can become developed enough to desire capitalism and democratic government, at which point they believe that most countries will become peaceful and predictable members of the world system of trade. 

    The USA pays for and administers the world system of trade.  In exchange we are able to print money and sell it, while deflating it. The rest of the world then uses these dollars to buy oil. I this way we tax the rest of the world for paying for our military program that defends the system of trade.  This is coming to an end.  The USA is seeking to prolong the need for the  dollar for the average American will experience a dramatic decline in his standard of living if the dollar is no longer in demand for oil purchases.

    Iran and Russia are attempting to create alternative oil exchanges not using dollars in order to undermine the ability of the USA to economically finance it’s military and therefore control oil prices.

    Muslim people understand this and it is what is driving their desire to oust dictators and restore their ’empire’ to its former prominence.  They are stifled by corruption, ignorance and poverty.

    The USA does not care who emerges as the leader of that civilization but it would prefer that it was Turkey and not Iran. Iran sees it as its destiny. And if successful iran will unite syria, iraq, iran and pakistan into a political and military block that will control world oil prices.  Russia believes that it will have control over this region, and so are allies. But they are likely mistaken that they will have anything other than a militant neighbor on their southern borders.

    If you can understand this you will understand the world we live in.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-many-Muslim-countries-run-by-dictators

  • Is The “old Left” Still A Viable Force Anywhere In Left-wing Politics?

    No, the effort today has changed from arguing in favor of labor, to arguing in favor of the poor and minorities. And from arguing for rents, to arguing for direct redistribution.
    • Marxism and the managed economy have been discredited.
    • In no small part, Labor is no longer a significant force in society, they are less profitable to run, and Labor Unions have been successfully discredited due to their abuses.
    • Public works projects other than infastructural necessity do not produce the returns anticipated.
    • Much of the Great Society (housing) turns out to be a recipe for poverty and crime. Large central projects turn out to be ineffective (see Detroit, MI.)
    So the movement has focused on direct redistribution. There are many reasons for this change but I would need a more specific question in order to avoid writing a ten thousand words to cover the entire suite of reasons. The left leaning economists desperately want to change this, but the public won’t have it. They are done with additional taxes.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Old-Left-still-a-viable-force-anywhere-in-left-wing-politics