Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Recommended A Book On Philosophy? Hmmm. Maybe a Library of them.

    Last weekend a friend of mine surprised me by confessing to have an interest in philosophy (which surprised me, I thought all he was interested in was traveling and fly-fishing) and recommended a book, Philosophy of Language , by Scott Soames. I am wondering, what do folks here think of Soames and of his book, Philosophy of Language? Epistemology and the philosophy of science are my main philosophical interests, but I have read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (at Ali’s urging) several years ago (LOVED it!) and am ready for another book on the general subject of philosophy of language and (because another friend of mine recommended it) I was about to purchase Soames’ book, but thought to pass it by y’all first just to make sure (if I can) that it is a good choice. If anyone has a better “one book read” suggestion on the philosophy of language, please let me know.

    I’d ask what he means by ‘philosophy’. Soams seems a little advanced for the common reader. I’d recommend Durant’s Story Of Philosophy. Furthermore, I think it’s also assumptive, since the entire anglo-analytical framework is a branch of logic, and is currently under significant attack, as either simply tautologically descriptive, or a as a deductive toolset. And as non-advisory and non-predictive, it’s questionable whether it has ethical content – meaning it’s questionable wither it can be used to determine action on it’s own, or whether it is a branch of logic to assist one in criticizing ethical action oriented statements in the face of a future about which one has insufficient knowledge. The counter proposition is best covered by Brand Blanchard (Yale) in Reason and Analysis, which is one of the best criticisms of the movement. Axis A) The historical Position is covered by Aristotle, Toynbee, Durant, Quigley, Gibbon, Braudel, Spengler, McNeil and, to add some depth Pomeranz, Mokyr, and Armstrong. The historians represent each of their cultural biases (french, english, american and german) but as a set are useful. To some degree weber belongs here to as he compared religions worldwide. Axis B) The ethical position is covered best by Marx and his disciples on the one end of the triangle (the peasantry), or Popper, Hayek, mises, rothbard, and perhaps Sowell and Parsons on the second (the middle class), and aristotle, machiavelli, sorel, michels, burnham, pareto, and weber on the third (nobility). The problem of the social sciences is stated by hume, but originates in the christian scholastics. He calls it induction. But that is an insufficient explanation of the problem which has distracted minds for centuries now. The technical solution to the social sciences was recommended by weber, and unfortunately the tool being used is largely quantitative economics – ie:trade, despite the fact that the status economy, the differences in IQ distribution among the classes, the power struggle between class elites, and the knowledge economy are as important as the monetary and trade economies. Axis C) In understanding ethics and politics it may be useful to understand that equality and the attempt to obtain power by claims for equality are the primary source of distraction in ethics. There are only three coercive technologies available to man, and that they are best exploited by different classes: inclusion/ostracization and access to opportunity and insurance or what we call moral coercion (talking), as practiced by the poorest classes. Remunerative coercion (money) as practiced by the moneyed and merchant classes. And violent coercion (law, violence, contract, and military action) as practiced by the managerial classes. The elites in each class use their own form of coercion and the three hierarchies constantly compete with one another to get their elites into power. This is perhaps the most easily applied means of analyzing human collective behavior. Contemporary philosophy as a discipline, is a tool for making one fit, but not for accomplishing anything alone. However, utility and wisdom in life’s actions are derived from a comparative study of history, wherein we discover what men actually do with the scribblings of philosophers. As Will Durant said after writing his history of philosophy: “I was interested in philosophy, but after my research, realized that there were no answers there. The answers are in history: the record of what men do.” I came to a similar conclusion and found that human sensation, perception, and reason is so limited that we have had to construct a number of terribly complex technologies that allow us to categorize, remember and compare those complexities that our hunter-gatherer biology was insufficient to sense, perceive, compare and calculate on it’s own. These tools include various complex contents of language, the narrative causal explanation, counting numbers, arithmetic, mathematics, accounting, and the iterative research program tools that we call the scientific method. POlitically we have invented various devices: ethics, morals, property, religious scripture, rhetorical debate, logic and it’s branches. Beyond the limits of perception and comparison of rhetoric, debate and politics, where we have exceeded the limits of those tools of consent, we have invented tools of cooperation in the extended order of others that we cannot sense or perceive, but must cooperate with none the less: the means of cooperating with entirely abstract perceptions: money, banking, prices, interest, contract, and abstract rule of law, and abstract property rights and options. We have invented all these technologies, mostly by accident, in order to solve the problems of coordinating our activities in a vast and complex division of knowledge and labor – because we must coordinate in that vast complex division of labor, because w are not wealthier than our cave men ancestors in the only human asset ‘time’ – we are simply vastly more productive, and have made everything vastly less expensive. The extent of that division is so vast that it is incomprehensible to the human mind. We have invented forms of ‘calculation’ (in the wider sense) in all fields of knowledge, and ‘the scientific method’ is little more than an accounting system and accounting principles for different branches of human inquiry such as Law, religious doctrine, physical science, history, and even music and the arts: any venture where the past must be categorized and compared to the current circumstance, so that it may be used to either make choices in, or to forecast the future. Linguistic philosophy is but one tool in that arsenal, and to view it as more than an epistemic device for the analysis and criticism of our accounting method is an act of intellectual egoism or myopia that borders on immoral and unethical. The fundamental problem of human existence is ethics – actions. Ethics is the underlying problem of the social sciences. So far, we have succeeded in our efforts to understand the physical sciences – the act of discovery, more than we have succeeded in our social sciences – the act of invention. To some degree the physical sciences are no longer a ‘problem’ but simply work. The social sciences, or the act of invention, is on the other hand, fraught with difficulty. Largely because we knew only the tools of the much more simplistic physical sciences, and it’s perception extending technology of calculus, and for a century or more have been erroneously attempting to apply the methods of the physical sciences to the social sciences, without the understanding that those tools are far too limited to assist us in the process of cooperation and invention. And the stress created upon our societies by this divergent progress, has left our social orders in conflict as our breeding rates and opportunities expand faster than our wisdom and our tools of sensation, perception, calculation and ethical decision making, as well as our tools of politics and political systems, commerce, contract, property and trade. As such, the question of philosophy has been lost in academic philosophy’s attempt to apply the principles of discovery to the process of invention, largely so that the field may find academic (ie:social status) legitimacy among the new harder physical sciences, rather than be relegated to the ‘arts’. And for that reason, philosophy has been lost for almost a century – in a futile attempt to legitimize itself as a methodology rather than as a practical tool for solving meaningful human problems. And as such it has become either a puzzle (as is much of higher mathematics) a form of self-referential entertainment, or a religion which to hide oneself like brahmins and buddhists, from material reality. All religions often need a reformation. And contemporary philosophy is one of them. (as can be easily discerned by reading a random sampling of papers.) One reason that ethical and political philosophers seek to find absolute statements in philosophical content is best seen in the contrast between western natural law (political), eastern natural law (familial), and everyone else’s ‘law’ which is more doctrinal (tribal). Most philosophical doctrines simply attempt to rationalize cultural preferences. For example, despite all our academic emphasis, it turns out that the german model of social order is better than the anglo-american model of social order, despite losing two wars, the german emphasis on mastery in the working class is the most effective social model – the upper classes take care of themselves. Anglo emphasis on the middle class, and everyone else’s emphasis on the peasantry, turn out to be less effective in maintaining competitive advantage and are driven by social status sentiments rather than reason. Therefore, as an ethical statement, the only measure of a philosophy is the economic status of its adherents. The number of ideas I’ve posited here are too large, perhaps, but it’s only by such positioning that it’s possible to justify the recommendation that no book on philosophy is terribly helpful. While the problem of human social cooperation and individual fulfillment is ancient, and while we have made great progress int eh social sciences, we have been distracted by a significant number of philosophical errors: ie: we have incorrectly either defined the problem, or applied the wrong tools or both. The fundamental problem of philosophy is action, and action requires categorization, calculation, forecast, and cooperation in vast numbers. And most philosophical doctrines attempt to simplify the number of axis in order to fit the limits available to the craft. Because the craft has not made use of tools that will allow it to extend its perception. Language in particular is somewhat interesting because all language constructs are analogies to perception, and as such are limited by perception. Hopefully there is something interesting for you to work with in this posting. Curt PS: again,thanks to all here who have helped me.

  • Our Failure To Keep It.

    The takeover of the administration of state by the middle class in England created a problem for politicians. WIth their new found responsibility, they were not against the king any longer, and now were against each other. Some were cognizant of the risk. Conservatism: Sentiments of freedom from totalitarianism, brotherhood of protection of the city, individual responsibility. group persistence. the unity of church and state. fidelity to one’s word. Objective truth in all statements. Purity. These are sentiments of group persistence. Classical Liberal: institutional Balance of power, the rule of law, enfranchisement of the many, contractually explicit government, the virtuous citizen created by trade and exchange. Libertarian Anarcho Capitalist: privatized institutions of social services, sound money, and the credit society. Hoppian Monarchy: the inter-temporal incentives of monarchy to accumulate social capital. Insurance companies as vehicles for Machiavellian: power maintained by minority willing to keep it by violence. violence is superior to fraud in both practice and logic. Compulsory saving. What separates the west from the less successful cultures, is that the [glossary:aryan] tradition’s philosophy is political rather than interpersonal. The greeks solved the problem of politics. The romans adopted and spread it. The church by contrast teaches empathy. The military state teaches objective truth. Neither compromises. Our version of ying-and-yang is not philosophical and personal, but institutional and political, and people are expected to master both empathy and objective truth. We did not fail to solve the problem of politics as did the other societies. We failed to keep it once we solved it. Monarchy, Senate (lords), Parliament, militarism, and the credit society. A house for each class. Not class warfare, but class cooperation.

  • Why Not Change Our Tax Structure To Punish Extra-Market Coercion?

    Paul Krugman writes:

    Soros, Obama, And Me What do we have in common? We’re all small business owners, according to Mitch McConnell. Obama and I make our business income off books — he sells the audacity of hope, Robin and I sell the misery of Econ 101; Soros makes his money off financial destruction directing funds to their most productive use; but we’re all in the same category as the owner of a small factory.

    Small business people? Hardly. That writing provides a limited return is not a measure of its level of consumption by a large number of customers, but a measure of how little people are willing to pay for it. The term Mitch is looking for is not “entrepreneur” it is “[glossary:Schumpeterian Intellectuals]”: people who bring about the destruction of capitalism, the market, and the prosperity of national competitiveness by undermining both the sentiment of, and capital structure of entrepreneurship.

    [callout]Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset.[/callout]

    Unfortunately, we don’t have special taxes for Shumpeterian market destroyers like we have special taxes on entrepreneurial market creators. But we can fix that. Perhaps we should level the playing field by heavily taxing political, extra-market goods and services, and lowering taxes on apolitical intra-market goods and services? Wouldn’t that be a switch? I mean, why should the amount of income be the axis of measurement, rather than the service provided to the market? Under that measure we could confiscate all of Soros’ money, recover our losses from the bloated financial sector, and reduce the media to non-profit status, and make political writing an unprofitable exercise. As for putting capital to a better purpose, that’s not yet proven. Soros was not participating in the market for goods and services by creating unemployment and reorganizing that capital for his use. He’s just using remunerative coercion under state protections. And extra-market remunerative coercion at that. A form of coercion made possible only by the restraint of violence by others in order to create the somewhat free market – a restraint he does not himself employ. And while that asymmetry of restraint may not be apparent to your cult of those who are incapable of holding territory and trade routes, or building an durable government, or durable institutions of calculation and cooperation, it is not lost on those of us whose ancestors have done so for a millennia or more. It seems odd to me that so many people fail to grasp just how entertaining and enjoyable civil war is for those people who practice militial restraint – often at high personal [glossary:forgone opportunity cost]. Modern war is a ‘hell’ only for people who fight in the western model. It’s not for warriors, terrorists and raiders. We forget that the reason we cannot conquer the Afghans is in no small part because raiding and killing are actually enjoyable, entertaining, status-enhancing pass times among practitioners. And creating markets and property rights, and philosophy and econometrics, is a poor substitute. Then, perhaps some of us should put our capital stock of violence to better use, if in our restraint, we are disabused by men who simply take advantage of our creation – the market. It would be the optimum use of our asset. Or those who put their financial capital stock, or political capital stock to such extra-market or Schumpeterian Intellectual purposes, could pay the opportunity cost of restraint, so that we do not have put our stock of violence to extra-market uses. So that we can continue to devote our energies to the proxy of entrepreneurship instead of the more enjoyable and rewarding uses of our capital stock of violence. Why should we simply transfer our capital at a discount from a stock of market making violence to a stock of market destroying verbal and political coercive uses, or remunerative extra-market coercive uses. After all, violence is far more coercive. And much more rewarding. 🙂 Cheers See [glossary:three coercive technologies].

    The depth of this insult is probalby accessible to only a few people. But I have to say this is one of my favorite little essays of late. – Curt

  • A Method For Moderating Dialogs

    “The Cult Of Offensive Moderation” Note: I am in the process of creating a plugin for political moderation of debates, without censorship. There is far too much censorship on debate sites and blogs. Especially censorship of in-group language. The sentiment of inclusion in Democratic Secular Humanism (our current religion in the west) is at odds with the change in our word-wide status and economic position as a polity. In-grop sentiments are becoming increasingly important again.

    [callout]Solution? Categorize posts in a debate as to whether they are:
    1) content free or off topic
    2) sentimental expressions
    3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning
    4) Objective rational arguments
    5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and
    6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.)
    If you could filter conversations by these arguments,the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity.[/callout]

    1) The strategy of moderating sentimental (non rational) expressions will not work, because it leads to regression – increasing sensitivity as a means of ostracizing people to the point where commenting becomes more an act of policing until the board declines. It increase the transaction cost of participation. 2) As someone who runs a large advertising agency that must help companies and groups understand ‘social interaction’, I spend a great deal of time trying to educate editorials that the ONLY thing people find interesting is CONFLICT. Talking head shows are either internally engaging in conflict (crossfire), or externally (oprah/hannity). Conflict leads to ratings and ratings to participation. WIthout conflict, in either a novel, sort story, or a talk show, there isn’t much to hold anyone’s attention. And the more attention that you hold (the more viewpoints included) the more likely one is to have a member of the audience identify with one of the participants, and become involved. 3) People learn by first identifying the SENTIMENTAL statements that they agree with, and then seeing those statements refuted. If you eliminate the religious nuts, or the racists, or the culture-ists, you’re actually killing off the social value as well as the attraction of your medium. Because all people operate by sentiments. They may learn to articulate those sentiments as mythology, as reason, as science, or as economics, but they are still, almost universally, articulating their sentiments – simply with a different degree of precision. 4) Personalities (contributors) cannot be allowed take over the board or its brand and become the show itself. That’s board-hijacking, rather than thread-hijacking. So if you have permanent troublemakers that begin to draw too much attention to themselves then it is better to heavily moderate them. But not because of the content and form of their arguments. You ban them because they dominate the conversation and make their own ‘show’ on your dime. Losing participants is dangerous for any medium. Even bad ones. Sanitizing a board usually ends up with no board at all. 5) Increasing the number of editors so that they split posts into new threads is better than banning or correcting. Remember – people are largely seeking attention for their niche fantasies. Ignoring people is the most effective means of negative reinforcement. 6) Sentiments (unarticulated expression) are the most common form of narrative. They are analogical arguments. Reason (to the degree that few people can actually articulate causal properties of categories), science (directly measurable subsets) and economics (indirectly measured supersets). Religion as we mean it, refers to scriptural command, or external non-human knowledge, in the monotheistic meaning. Polytheism and history are simply differences of degree. It is scripture. 7) it is particularly troubling to eliminate what is called hate-speech or inter-group expression of sentiments. That ‘s because the most important dialog of our age is the change in group sentiments now that the worldwide change in status and power hierarchies has come about because of the worldwide adoption of western economic and material technologies. SOLUTION? Editing and moderating are hard. It is very, very, difficult to ascertain the quality of an argument in the social sciences. We are fairly sure that the entire Marxist religion, masquerading as a political movement, is as irrational as the Islamic political movement masquerading as a religion, are both extremely dangerous to mankind. But since we live in a POLITY, and the member of that polity largely use SENTIMENTS rather than reason in debate, and that their beliefs and debates are highly influential upon the outcome (more than reason by a long shot), and that most people criticizing these sentimental arguments lack causal depth in their own arguments, then the best board, the best discussions, the best social outcome, is determined by keeping an argument on track, rather than censoring it. An alternate solution, (and I have done a little work on this) categorizing posts in a debate as to whether they are 1) content free or off topic 2) sentimental expressions 3) mythical, Platonic, or scriptural reasoning 4) Objective rational arguments 5) scientific arguments (using survey data but which are very fragile in the social sciences) and 6) economic arguments (which because of scale and aggregation allow cultural comparison.) If you could filter conversations by these arguments, you would be able to stack them by methodology, and the reader could participate in a conversation of his own level of capacity. DIFFERENT IDEOLOGIES Although, we should note, that as scripture, you will have a hard time actually arguing against catholic doctrine as it’s based upon natural law: the observation of what men actually do. WHich is, what appears to be, the general sentiment and strategy underlying most semi scientific argument on this board. (Which I admire). If you want to argue using reason, the libertarian methodology will most likely lead you to correct conclusions. However, libertarianism consists of a set of branches, some of which do NOT correspond to reality, including 1) Rothbard’s principle of non-violence which is a silly argument, since the entire problem of social order is non-violence 2) free trade would lead in the end, to as state of affairs not any different from world-governance 3) libertarians have not included the cost-of-forgone-opportunities which is how we pay for the creation of some set of property rights, and therefore, failed to account for the cost of developing social order. As such, it’s a platonic fantasy counter to evidence. Conservatism is the best strategy for preventing social destruction, revolution and un-meritous rotation of elites. It is very skeptical of power – power should be obtained by public service in the market, or in the military in the defense of the market. Any other grab at power is specious. That’s the sentimental origin of the western city-market building shareholder system we call ‘citizenship’. But conservative philosophy has not provided a solution to our vast increase in the division of knowledge and labor. It has not provided us with an updated set of institutions for the contemporary world. And FWIW : Conservatism is largely an unarticulated sentiment that is more complex than left-liberalism, as conservatives rely on at least five axis the most important of which is group persistence, and liberals only one (harm/care). The combination of harm/care simplicity, egalitarian equality, Keynesian macroeconomic policy (statistics, full employment, liquidity) and democratic government, are ideal tools for competing with a sentiment thats primary purpose is to avoid hubris, and protect the group for the long term. In other words, consumption on the left versus capitalization on the right.

    [callout]The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. And partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind.[/callout]

    The balance between liberalism (Pareto’s Instinct for Recombination, or Machiavelli’s Foxes) and conservatism (Pareto’s Preservation of Aggregates, or Machiavelli’s Lions) is a necessary conflict between the forces of stability that must allow change, but not disruption, and those that desire change regardless of consequences – because both innovation and stability are valuable to a civilization This debate in sentiments is particularly useful because reason is insufficient for solving this problem, largely because we have failed to make the same progress in induction and the social sciences that we have in deduction and the physical sciences. Partly because the physical sciences are vastly less complex than the more heuristic social science governed by the properties of the human mind. And just so we’re all living in rational reality not committing the error of confusing our own religion with neutral objective science, much of what is argued for on this board by well meaning products of our the past sixty years of western educational system, most often is doctrine of the RELIGION of Democratic Secular Humanism (which is a religion as it is contrary to the facts). Or of egalitarian equality, which is is a property of the Democratic Secular Humanist religion, and is also contrary to the facts. Or the assumption that freedom is the desire of the majority is counter to the facts. That is, as long as we realize that people are racist, culture-ist, class-ist, nationalist, cultist, members of competing civilizations, and they all are, because they all act that way under DURESS, and that it’s advantageous both for elites and for the underclass to be ‘anything-ist’, and that these traits are beneficial to economic man, beneficial to individuals, and an enduring part of the human experience. And if one doesn’t think so, then truth isn’t one’s objective, platonism is. Truth is correspondence with reality.

  • The Child Of Democracy And Secularism Is Stillborn

    (Posted in the comments section of the NYT) In response to the comments section of one of Paul Krugman’s articles: British Decline I felt that all the people that were commenting were right. They understood the failure of conservative policy. The same way that conservatives understand the failure of liberal policy. But they are working on different axis. Neither to do with one another. Our ideological war has now become a race and class war. New elites are emerging. They are less invested in the previous order. They are messianic. They are driven by the one force that is unstoppable: the loss of status and power, which no group will tolerate, and which whites only tolerated because of the combined guilt of slavery and colonialism, and the attack on men by feminism. The elites widthrew from society, participated in the commercial marketplace, left the arts to immigrants, and abandoned high culture. This was fine until the middle class was threatened. At this point, not only is the middle class threatened but so are the working class whites. Under duress people rely upon the mirror test: people who look like them. They are under duress economically. And they feel that their government, the very government that they surrendered, is against them. The ascendency of europeans and the protestant reformation is being undone. Classical liberalism is being undone. It is being undone for exactly the reasons conservatives stated it would be undone. The inability of conservatives to produce a cult (romanticism) and the abilty of conservatives to produce an economic and political model to compete with socialism and social-democracy, using the tools of monetary policy, and the state, to transfer power and advantage. RE: “Japan has a big asset: a leadership that honestly cares for its people. This caring (amateur sociology, according to professional economist), is due to their tribal unity.” This comment correctly states the issue: that despite hardship and demographic changes, the japanese remain under solidarity.

    [callout]Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Economics is not a sufficient means of organizing a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.[/callout]

    This is scientific data, not amateur sociology: The japanese are a homogenous racist society. Economic success by any group will not lead to political disenfranchisement of another group, wherein the dominant group will lose privilege and opportunity, or the competing groups will not eliminate but simply alter the baises of privilege and opportunity. The USA is an empire. People of different races, cultures and religions, do not mix except under very rare circumstances at the margins, largely to do with status economies and the resulting access to mates and opportunities. The human accounting system is status, not money. Because intra-group status is more rewarding than extra-group status. We will not have multi-culturalism when different groups have the ability to obtain political power, and can undermine the majority status system. There was far more multi-culturalism under the great monarchies of europe than today. Simply because commercial excellence was the only status route available to minorities, because the political system was not open to them. Power is not meritocratic. It just is power, and the most important objective of power is to deprive other people of it. And the most important feature of western culture was that it allowed status gain by market activity even if denied access to political office which might alter that dichotomy. The conservative movement was a reaction to a violation of its core principle of long term group cohesion – a necessary component of land holding and trade-route holding – persistence which cannot be maintained through economic means alone. Only tribalism and pure military strength are strong enough to hold trade routes. THe conservative movement since the end of the war was a reaction against the disintegration of the sentiments of group-persistence, due to immigration, post-slavery political problems, feminism and anti-colonialism, as a coalition against the established political order. And instead of obtaining their ‘rights as englishmen’ of property, and market participation, these groups sought political power – political power is not meritocratic. It is just force. This process s playing out, and will play out, as materially important and highly predictive. Our culture will not assimilate and unify. It will not achieve the grand vision. We are demographically adopting the south american model. We will, and are, fragmenting to the point where the government may lose the ability to govern. If we get only two states to make use of nullification that will be the end of our multi-cultural, melting-pot fantasy. And three more years of low employment will almost guarantee it. Good economics is not macro economics. All economics is micro. Because the vast movement of human beings over time is determined by what they cannot sense by quantitative means, and what they can sense by qualitative means: the loss of their status and opportunity due to enforced competition, and competition from people who are no longer asked to integrate and to be ‘american’ and adopt american values, but to oppose those values and retain their culture at any cost, because en-masse, it is a way to obtain political power, rather than participate in the market and become an american by earning status in the market. All your criticisms of the free trade movement are correct. Conservatives were attempting to preserve the cult of american classical liberalism, preserve existing status hierarchies, and force people to conform to that value system – their cult – and therefore force people into the market under the monarchic classical liberal model. THe conservative policies that you are railing against are simply means of undermining the attack on the classical liberal cultural order. Justified as economic nonsense maybe. But pursued for precisely conservative reasons. Neither side wins. Period. We all lose. A nation is its cult. Because economics is not a sufficient means of decision making in a polity. Democracy wasn’t the only god that failed. It married secularism. And it’s child is stillborn.

  • Anarchists and Elitism?

    From The Liberty Defense League, an exceptionally intelligent posting on the weaknesses of anarchism.

    Some libertarian friends call for anarchy to prevail. While such a state of affairs may be offering momentary delights, we need to remember that if we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. Anarchy is government of nothing, and is only a transitional period between different states of order. Order always arises from chaos, and anarchy is often a tool of leftists. I am sure true libertarians are well meaning in upholding individuals’ self-rule in looking to a utopian anarchy, but I believe they are being used, even misled, to merely be creating conditions for another tyranny to prevail. The libertarian anarchists are correct in stating why the current Federal Union of Criminals Unlimited gives us ample reason to secede. But to what goals do we truly aspire?

    (My comment posted from the site, copied below for recording purposes.) Exceptionally intelligent article. Thank you. A couple of insights for context.

    [callout]The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of Keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. [/callout]

    The Anarchist movement, and the Rothbardian Libertarian Philosophy, are reactions to the failure of the conservative movement as well as the traditional classical liberal movement that is the jeffersonian model under which our nation has been founded, to provide an intellectual framework that can compete with the combination of marxist philosophy, socialist sentiments, and political tools that derive from the combination of keynesian monetary philosophy with the rise of the dynamic stochastic equilibrium model. (I realize that this is a mouthful, but it is the correct analysis.) Mises, Hayek, Parsons, Popper, Rothbard, Nozick, fall failed despite great minds, to provide a solution to the semi-rational tools provided by the above listed models. The conservatives from Kirk onward produced sentimental historical references, but no rational philosophical framework. Especially that could compete with the heady religious scripture, rational philosophy, and volume of production of marxism and marxists. They failed because government consist of both the associations you refer to, as well as the institutions that limit the use of free associations to become governments themselves, and therefore have the ability to project their will by edict, rather than the ability to advocate their will upon the desirous. From this viewpoint, the anarchic research program, when approached as a program of research in limiting government (as largely done by Hoppe), has accomplished more than all other freedom-driven intellectual programs. But as a practical political movement it will fail. It wil fail for the reasons you have stated. However, it has contributed greatly to the philosophical debate. We just do not yet know how to change our institutions to make use of the libertarian anarchist framework of privatization in order to balance the use of monetary policy and redistributive sentiments, with freedom. Libertarians figured it out. Most of it. And we should thank them for it. The primary change in the nature of government was that western government ceased attempting to increase economic productivity after the great war, and instead, emphasized expansion and redistribution. And this treat to our freedom was started by the Louisiana Purchase and our fate sealed with the civil war. Liberty is for small homogenous states. And as Federalist 10 states, any time you have a government over people with dissimilar economic and cultural interests, it’s not a government, it’s an empire, and as an empire, it’s oppressive. – a member of the anarcho capitalist research program.

  • Privatization From Obama?

    While the devil is in the details, and I have less than zero confidence in this president, he proposed a structural change in the way we ‘purchase’ infrastructure projects, that would effectively privatize the process, rather than continue the current (corrupt) process of relying upon earmarks. From The NYT:

    Mr. Obama … called for what the White House is describing as an “infrastructure bank” that would focus on paying for national and regional transportation projects by pooling private money with public investment. He said the bank would eliminate a patchwork system in which transportation projects are financed through Congressional earmarks rather than based on merit.

    From The White House

    The President proposes to fund a permanent infrastructure bank. This bank would leverage private and state and local capital to invest in projects that are most critical to our economic progress. This marks an important departure from the federal government’s traditional way of spending on infrastructure through earmarks and formula-based grants that are allocated more by geography and politics than demonstrated value. Instead, the Bank will base its investment decisions on clear analytical measures of performance, competing projects against each other to determine which will produce the greatest return for American taxpayers.

    Impressive. Now, let’s see it work.

  • Don’t Tell the Creative Department, but Software Can Produce Ads, Too

    Software That Produces Ads?

    September 4th, 2010 


    The NYT

    “BETC Euro RSCG, part of the Euro RSCG Worldwide division of Havas, has developed software that can produce elementary advertisements. The software is called CAI, pronounced Kay, for Creative Artificial Intelligence.”

    (Posted in NYT comments)

    In the late eighties I wrote a very complex set of software applications that took data and made legal arguments. It horrified people in the profession, who were, at that time, still addicted to legal pads and lofty self impressions. But we were able to increase a docket (the set of cases a lawyer could manage) from the tens to the thousands. Admittedly, this was procedural law, and not dramatic legal theater. But it was law and argument none the less.

    The number of federal judges that have seen, read and processed documents, and adjudicated cases based upon arguments purportedly written by lawyers, but entirely generated by machine, and only given a cursory review, is in the many hundreds, and the cases the tens of thousands.

    Ads are not much different. They are commodities. Visual and literary symbolism adds high permutations to those commodities. But that does not mean that they are not formulaic.

    Except for perhaps the top half-percent of ads, and except for brand symbols like logos, almost all advertising (impressions that is) relies upon a very limited set of visual compositions.

    Any sufficiently mature technology becomes clerical in nature. And 2D ads are a mature and fairly tired technology. It matters more that you can afford to insert it into the consumer’s environment a hundred times, than does the quality of it. And the quality of an ad simply decreases the cost of the number of impressions needed to stick an idea into the consumer’s head.

    The reality is the reality: advertising is a commodity and it is rarely interesting, rarely innovative, and almost entirely derivative. And if it wasn’t it wouldn’t work.

    Almost all current creative innovation is in the digital arena, simply because it’s a deeper technology that hasn’t been fully explored.

    Current attempts at automating 2D ads are not all that impressive. But given a sufficient pool of images, a sufficient pool of phrases and quotes, and a sufficient influx of cultural symbolism, and a simple enough set of requirements, most ads are derivative and permutations rather than informative and persuasive, and as such most ads can be automated.

    And given the diverse quality of ads (impressions, not media) the median of the curve of quality of ad would undoubtably shift to the better, given automation.

    http://www.puretheoryofmarketing.com

  • A Political Movement Pretending To Be A Religion Replaces A Religion Pretending To Be A Political Movement

    From The Left’s Unlikely Alliance with Islam By Robert Eugene Simmons Jr.

    [callout]First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion.[/callout]

    Most fair-minded Americans have no problem with people who wish to practice their religion. In addition, most fair-minded Americans know of the difficult pasts of Christianity and Judaism and would demand of Islam what has been demanded of other religions. Americans don’t tolerate inquisitions anymore than they do Sharia courts. Americans realize that religious freedom is inherent in the melting pot that is America, but they also understand that all religions must exist under an umbrella of mutual respect and within the boundaries of common law. Americans would no more accept honor killings than they would accept a Catholic man killing atheists for the sake of his religion. The freedom of religion, in the end, is not a carte blanche to do whatever you wish and then yell “first amendment,” but rather a constraint to prevent the government from imposing a single religion, as Islamic governments do.

    I would add, that any religion that seeks dominion over temporal matters (to establish laws) is not a religion, but a political movement masquerading as a religion. And any religion that encourages its people to lie about their convictions, is incompatible with democratic government. Even worse, it’s incompatible with the western way of life. First we encounter Marxism, which is a religion masquerading as a political movement. When we finally defeat Marxism the void is almost immediately filled by Islam, which is a political movement masquerading as a religion. Islam and Marxism are the same. They are the totalitarianism of equality in ignorance and poverty. (In retrospect, Christianity wasn’t much better when it was brought into the empire. )

  • An Analysis Of Freedom #2: The Economy Of Freedom

    A Little History For Context

    The term ‘Freedom’, and its near relation ‘Liberty’, have a long heritage.   The babylonian words “ama-gi”, meaning “Return To The Mother”, written in cuneiform, are often cited by Libertarians as the first written use of ‘freedom’. That usage literally refers to giving a slave back to his mother — an analogy to the more precisely stated ‘freeing him from slavery’ – owners gave a slave back to his mother when freeing him.  In practice, the word “ama-gi” was used to grant exceptions from the dictator’s obligations or taxes.  So the term meant freedom from obligations to the government. These special dispensations were used as a reward – freedom from requirements. The most simplistic use of Freedom described the opposite of slavery. It was not an abstraction, but a direct analogy to the deprivation of one’s choices under the threat of violence. Slavery to contemporary ears is a horrid system, but under barbarism it was universal. ( Barbarism refers to those people not members of one’s market  system ) (( DEFINITION of “BARBARIAN”: Those persons who do not pay the set of costs of forgone opportunity, employed within a social order that cooperatively manages a market and territory. )) Most farm labor required a great deal of physical effort — hard work easily avoided with slaves. People often sold themselves into slavery simply because it was a reliable way to be fed and sheltered in a world where starvation and hunger were common. Wars and raids were conducted to obtain slaves – forced laborers. And escape was dangerous in that ancient world – without a tribe to take care of you, starvation was almost guaranteed. Later, ‘Freedom’ was the term used to describe a Free Man. A ‘Citizen’. A ‘non-barbarian’. This means quite literally, in a world consisting largely of either barbarians, competing warrior states, or eastern dictatorships, ‘an investor in the city and market’. As an investor, or rather It is hard for us to to imagine a world of barbarians. It is not so hard to imagine a world filled with conquerors. Today’s barbarians are immigrants who do not conform. And nation states that seek power in order to obtain resources and trade routes. Liberty by contrast, refers, not to constraint of, and control of, individual actions under threat of violence such as under the institution of slavery, but to the more general absence of coercion by a government, of those people who are not slaves, and not barbarians, and therefore citizens.  In particular, in the west, it implies and egalitarian relationship between all those who are responsible for society: refraining from imposing conditions other than those one places on one’s self, or are required in order to maintain the property definitions (( DEFINITION of “PROPERTY DEFINITIONS”: A set of forgone opportunities that require one refrain from using objects of utility, or refrain from seizing or creating opportunities for gain – ie: self enforced self deprivations – usually described as property both individual and shareholder, manners, ethics, morals )) that constitute the social order. ((DEFINITION of “SOCIAL ORDER”: A social order is a collection of property definitions, and the required forgone opportunities required of members of the society in order to allow non-violent cooperation, and the establishment of a division of labor, and peaceful trade and exchange. And if a landed culture, also including the visible material contributions needed to maintain the physical viability of the territory, its built capital, its resources, and most importantly its market – without which escape from poverty is impossible. )) But in response to increases in the complexity of social order due to increases in population and the resulting increases in the division of knowledge and labor, both of the terms of “Freedom” and “Liberty” have been subject to political framing by public intellectuals and politicians, and their followers in the pragmatic public who use the extraordinary and uncommon freedom of speech ‘discount’ under democratic government to redefine these terms.  This redefinition of the Social Order’s Property Definitions, and restatement of the material costs and  the forgone opportunity costs of that system, has effectively constituted a legitimization of fraud, theft and redistribution. This restatement consequently led to a gradual usurpation of the social accounting system of opportunity costs, material costs, that make the market society possible. This distortion and confusion of meaning begs analysis, so that we, as members of a society under a democratic government, can tell the difference between those commonly held properties of freedom and liberty that are necessary and possible, from those that are either forms logically and physically impossible, from those that are intentionally obscure or distorted for the purpose of committing fraud and theft — or both. While frequent increases or decreases in redistribution of the PROFITS from the market are not only justifiable and beneficial, but warranted as a return on on the investment to shareholders (( DEFINITION of “SHAREHOLDER”: Synonym to “CITIZEN”: individuals who contribute forgone opportunity costs expressed as property definitions and thereby pay for the social order. ))  (“Citizens”) as the division of knowledge and labor increases, the redefinition of the accounting system of property definitions, and forgone opportunity costs is simply a complex form of corruption, theft and fraud.  Corruption theft and fraud  made possible by the obscurity of the causal processes employed to create the Social Order, due to the fact that they are evolutionary in origin, unarticulated, expressed almost entirely as sentiments, and understood only as habits, superstitions, traditions, or exploitations, rather than as a system of precise and material accounting and costs, that materially effect economic calculation and human cooperation as the size of the population and the resultant division of knowledge and labor increases.

    A Society Is Its Market : The Agrarian Society, Built Capital, Trade, And The Division Of Knowledge And Labor

    (UNDONE)

    The West And The Fraternal Order Of Market Making Soldiers

    The Great Transformations: In Europe, Asia, The Middle East, and Africa Converting From Barbarism To City And Market – Europe Converting From Barbarism To Irrigating The Alluvial Plain – Middle East Converting From Barbarism By Combat – Asia Remaining in Barbarism – Sub Saharan Africa

    The Behavioral Properties Of Freedom

    The Desire For Freedom Versus Security.

    Endless Want And Acquisitiveness, and The Role Of Imitation, Envy  Status, And The Status Economy.

    (UNDONE)

    Property Is Defined Universally, But  Shareholder Rights Are Open To Corruption

    (UNDONE) The Oddity Of The Cognitive Bias In The Consensus And Equality Sentiments (UNDONE) Consensus Is Limited, On Means, and On Ends To Small Numbers Of People With Similar Objectives, Abilities, and Resources (UNDONE)

    Freedom And The Status Economy

    Almost Universally, Humans Don’t Like Status That Is Not Given as a reward for redistribution. All cultures, all humans, sense and express resentment at ‘excessive returns’ on any type of investment. Under heroic cultural systems, the hero is granted status and access to opportunity in exchange for his efforts on behalf of the group.  As population increases, classes form because enough people exist in each class that they form group status hierarchies, and trade opportunities, and contribute to sustaining the group’s advantages.  In effect, a class becomes an organization or bureaucracy whose members attempt to preserve it’s network of opportunities – it’s binding principles. At this point, exchange between classes must form some sort of trade network, and as this happens, classes, as organizations,  compete against other classes for status.

    The Freedom Seeking Minority Versus The Equality Seeking Majority

    The Vast Majority of people to not want freedom, because freedom requires responsibility and risk.  When people come to free societies, they either desire the standard of living, or access to opportunity. But they rarely, if ever, desire to contribute to the maintenence of the market order by forgoing opportunities, .  In fact, they desire to gain the most using the least contribution. Likewise, (equality) So the contemporary use of the word freedom is the opposite of the contemporary use of the word equality

    Property Is The Human Accounting System And Money And Numbers Increase Our Capacity for Perception, Comparison and Calculation Of Property

    (UNDONE) The Economic Function Of Freedom In a division of labor, freedom increases consumption, decreases cost of maintaining the behavior of paying opportunity  costs to create the  market and contribute to property definitions, but most importantly, increases the process of trial and error – the process of entrepreneurship. Increases in trial and error lead to increases in the division of knowledge and labor, and increases in consumer choice, and decreases in prices.

    The Limited Use Of Freedom As A Competitive Strategy Between Groups

    If we define freedom as freedom from coercion, then there are only so many strategies that work for different groups with different abilities and resources.  Total freedom, which means barbarism,  Religion (resistance), Trade, and Force.

    Freedom As Return On Investment In The Market, And The Market Is The Social Order

    Freedom obtained in exchange for one’s return on one’s investment of forgone opportunities in the property definitions that constitute the local market. This contribution of forgone opportunity costs, is the cost of entry into the market, and the means by which one has access to the market.  One can only be as free as the granularity of the property definitions. Profits are signals that convey rewards from the market participants that you have been rewarded for fulfilling their wants and desires. Redistribution is a form of return on the market, but only so long as (only so long as what?) Freedom is only relevant in a market society.  Market societies are superior to alternative societies.

    The Economy Of Freedom

    We are all born free, so to speak, and able to use perception, memory, thought, action, force and violence to get whatever we want, if we choose to. Cooperation is not a necessity, at least for the strong. It is a compromise. It is a trade off. So lets look at the scope of actions human beings can take, and start from there, so that we can understand cooperation and freedom, and the compromises, costs and benefits that cooperation requires of us. Scope Of Individual Human Action If we eliminate the nearly infinite complexity that comes along with cooperation, we are left with only this scope of human actions.

      • A.0) Thought
      • A.1) Motion
      • A.2) Consumption
      • A.3) Transformation
      • A.4) Violence
      • A.5) Mating

      The Five Freedoms

      Given the possible scope of human actions listed above, there are only five possible non-contradictory freedoms available to human beings. Non-contradictory means that they can be granted to others equally without coercing them.

        To grant these rights we only need to refrain from violence. In libertarian philosophy this is the principle of non-violence.

        By refraining from violence we enforce cooperation.  In other words, we coerce cooperation by depriving people of their natural ability to use violence.  Furthermore, by depriving people of violence we make them more equal, by redistributing opportunities from the strong to the weak.

        All other freedoms or rights, are derivatives of those five listed above. The remaining freedoms people commonly refer to are technologies of coercion for the purpose of cooperation, or of opposition for the purpose of competing with or avoiding the coercion.

        To say that they are forms of coercion, is not to demean them. Many coercions are a proxy for violence. Property itself is a coercion.

        We defend property. (talk about property and memory here)

        there is a limit to cooperatino because of a limit to perception. Imagine for a moment that you could know the wants and desires of all people on the planet at once, and you could also know, all the resources that could be put to use by each person, all the skills that could be put to use by each person, all the tools available to each person, all the relationships that each person has, and the geography that each person has access to. Imagine trying to organize it all. Now, imagine that each person is trying to at least maintain his or her respect, or status. And that all these people are of different ages, and of differentI. Cooperative Organization – The Production Economy

        Cooperative freedoms permit the division of knowledge and labor, which decrease everyone’s costs, or the concentration of effort to increase both the likelihood of success, and decrease the individual costs. Many people use subjective analysis, expressing these cost reductions as emotions. But our emotions exist to assist us in identifying cost reductions. Emotions describe changes in state. They inform us. They inform us in particular about changes in the state of our costs. Human aesthetics may be wounded by this fact, but all group emotional sensitivities are to costs and discounts.

          • Coercion: Norms under threat of violence.
            Opposition: Violence, Fraud, Theft, Coercion, Physical Restraint, Enslavement
            Cost: Forgone Opportunity costs of Coercion, Fraud, Theft and Violence. The cost of not stealing.
            Perception and Calculation: Property and prices allow us to percieve beyond our senses. To cooperate in large numbers. Property IS calculation.
            • Key Concept:
            • P.1) Life, Movement and Action:
            • P.2) Property (Exclusive Use. Inventory)
            • P.3) Exchange (Trade)
            • P.4) Freedom of Cooperation:
            • P.5) Freedom Of Assertion

            II. Cultural Organization: Manners, Ethics, Morals, Religion  – The Conformity Economy (Inclusion / Ostracization)

            Ethics: The Invisible Cost Economy Freedom to attempt to establish a network of norms: restraints on action enforced by inclusion or exclusion in the group. Inclusion in the group reduces risk and increases opportunity.

            Manners, Ethics and Morals are terms for different segments of a spectrum for controlling costs of a group. Manners reduce friction and demonstrate predictability, class and quality. Display of good manners means access to more people who may grant one more opportunities. Each use of good manners requires some form of discipline. Each act of discipline is a cost to the individual, and a contribution to the cultural institutions. Each abuse of manners is a lack of discipline and a withdrawal from the cultural institutions. Manners must have a witness who can observe the demonstration of one’s discipline. In a demonstration of manners, there is no asymmetry of information. Each equally can observe the other.

            Ethics on the other hand is a study in asymmetry. An action is ethical or not, because of shared lack of knowledge of the future, and asymmetry of knowledge between individuals. If one person has deep knowledge and the other shallow of the same exchange, ethical treatment requires that the person with greater knowledge act as if the other person is possessed of the same knowledge, and each is responsible for protecting the other from harm.

            Ethical systems generally occupy some portion of a spectrum from the criminal to the charitable. a) The Criminal Ethic: I take what I can, without consent. a) The Bazaar Ethic: whatever I can get away with in voluntary exchange. b) The Warrior Ethic: whatever will not make the other or unhappy. c) The Christian Ethic: What is equally beneficial for both parties. d) The Charitable Ethic: As long as the other person prospers, I do not care what my outcome is. Then most ethical systems generally consist of intra-group and extra-group criteria, that might not be the same. Within and across family, clan, tribe, culture, religion, race, each culture varies in its adherence to its ethical standards. Furthermore,

            Moral systems imply total asymmetry of knowledge. Actions fall under moral criteria whenever the cost of seizing an opportunity for one’s benefit either risks, or places an external cost, and a high cost, on others, and in particular, others with no recourse.

                • Coercion:
                  Opposition:
                  Cost:
                  Perception and Calculation:
                • C.1) Cultural Freedom: (Choice and Opposition)
                • C.2) Freedom of Norms (Competition and Choice) Participate in sets of norms, to select norms.
                • C.3)
                • Religion (Cultural Law And Institutionalized Conformity)

                • R.1) Religious Freedom: Freedom to create institutions, rituals, and codes for the purpose of establishing the criteria of inclusion and exclusion (ostracization). Including Freedom to choose to participate in religious factions, and freedom to evade participation in factions. Religions create opportunity monopolies and attempt to disallow competition of forgone opportunity costs. Competing religions are competitions of opportunities and opportunity costs. Evading participation is an attempt to obtain opportunities at a discount.

                III. Regulatory Organization: Law(organized violence and coercion)

                P.1) Political Freedom (Choice and Opposition): speech, assembly, leadership, concentration of wealth. (The right to cooperate against others who have a similar right) The right of opposition. Political freedom is the freedom to cooperate for GROUP ends, by pooling resources, and establishing an organization, or association for the purpose of advancing those ends.

                  • L.1) Legislative Freedom:
                  • L.2) Institutional Freedom:
                  • L.3) National freedom:

                  IIII. Credit Organization (Anonymous, Non-Territorial Law)

                  • CL.1)

                  VI. Capitalist Freedom

                  (organizatoins to concentrate real capital) (abstract property definitions)

                    V. Redistributive Organization

                    • R.1) Redistributive Freedom