Curt Doolittle

Theme: Civilization

  • THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT The enlightenment mythos was almost as damagi

    THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

    The enlightenment mythos was almost as damaging was christianity. The greatest tragedy in human history may have been the christianization of Europe. The empirical side of the enlightenment was desperately needed to escape jewish mysticism that held us in ignorance for a millennia. Equality under the law, was important for the spread of commerce.

    But, just as moving people from christianity’s mysticism via Darwin was, let’s say … incomplete, it is very hard to move people from equality of property rights, equality under the law, and the equality of family interests, to what the socialists accomplished, which was equality of opportunity, material equality, inequality under the law, eradication of the common law by legislative law, and the destruction of the nuclear and absolute nuclear family in pursuit of ‘individualism’.

    We have a very hard time overturning this mythos. This mythos is even rampant in libertarianism. Libertarians are just as enamored of the fallacy of equality as are socialists. Libertarians want to retain meritocracy, sure. But most of us assume the same naive belief that if others ‘only understood’ they would adopt our system of values.

    But that’s just demonstrably false, both logically, praxeologically, and empirically. The majority of the world detests property rights and individualism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-15 04:03:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    My Life with Ronald: Well, ok, Professor Tolkien

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-14 05:37:00 UTC

  • THE TWO DARK or ANGLO-COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECTS 1) Attack on diversity and

    THE TWO DARK or ANGLO-COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECTS

    1) Attack on diversity and equality as a means of preserving our ability to use historical deliberative classical liberal institutions

    2) Formulation of alternative institutions that make possible the voluntary cooperation between diverse and unequal people.

    THE RIGHT IS DOING THE FIRST.

    I (as a libertarian) AM DOING THE SECOND.

    THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENT IS NOT REACTIONARY – ITS RADICAL.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 02:27:00 UTC

  • LACKING A ‘BOOK’ – YOU NEED A BOOK We benefit from the evolutionary structure of

    LACKING A ‘BOOK’ – YOU NEED A BOOK

    We benefit from the evolutionary structure of aristocracy. But we are harmed by by the loss of Druidic mythos, and the failure to articulate the necessary properties of the aristocratic egalitarian society

    EITHER THEFT IS IMMORAL OR IT ISN’T – THE MANNER OF THEFT OR THEFT?

    Is theft only wrong when it is intersubjectively verifiable? Or is theft wrong, in that it is destructive of cooperation, no matter whether it is visible or not? I think it is hard to convince people of anything but the latter.

    Is ownership determined by action? If ownership is determined by action then institutions that require respect of property are a commons that is paid for by action, in voluntary exchange.

    While I don’t want to, at this moment, write something very long to demonstrate this argument in detail, it is, as far as I know, an impenetrable criticism of rothbardian ethics, and a replacement of those ethics with propertarian ethics as the only LOGICALLY POSSIBLE definition of property rights. It is a replacement of the ethics of the ghetto with the ethics of the aristocracy.

    It is not possible to have an institution of property rights on the rothbardian model, because it is a praxeological disincentive to develop property rights.

    Aristocratic propertarianism is the replacement of rothbard’s individualistic me and my promise of violence with the egalitarian us and our promise of violence.

    It is the corporation. The corporeal-ization of property rights.

    It is not logical that individuals can create ‘possess’ property rights. One can demand them in exchange. But it takes a minimum of two people to create property rights, because they can only be obtained in exchange.

    ORIGINS

    Sitting in Church at the age of 12, I promised myself I would write that book. Yes, we have the (rather pitiful) book of Jerusalem, but Athens didn’t give us a book. Plato’s tried but his book is a catastrophe. Aristotle didn’t survive well enough for us enough to work with as “a book” – although it might be reconstructable in at least small parts. The Monarchies didn’t leave us a book. Although we could argue that Smith and Hume together made a pretty good pass at it democratizing it. Chivalry left us a book: arthurian legends. And I think the reason we don’t have a book, is that the church imposed its book – and that book wasn’t a very good one. Not as good as Aristotle’s would have been. That book, and the church, were a prohibition on writing the book of aristocratic egalitarianism. Albiet, the church is the OTHER HALF of aristocratic egalitarianism.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-13 02:07:00 UTC

  • THE MELTING POT THAT ISNT Data is data. Turns out that what we melt is purely sc

    THE MELTING POT THAT ISNT

    Data is data. Turns out that what we melt is purely scientific, legal, and commercial; and what doesn’t melt is family, morality, metaphysics, and therefore politics.

    Or, what I would describe in Propertarian terms, as “explicitly calculable” implicit knowledge vs “inexplicitly calculable” tacit knowledge.

    We can structure formal institutions only for a subset of knowledge.

    Myth, tradition, ritual, family, morals, ethics, and manners are something that can also be institutionalized.

    And that us the conservative vision: formal institutions are not enough.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 05:00:00 UTC

  • What is it about south american cultures that produces so many good libertarian

    What is it about south american cultures that produces so many good libertarian thinkers? De Soto is obvious and Spanish, but why is it that there are so many young libertarians from south america? And the quality of thought is exceptional. At least compared to americans. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-04 01:53:00 UTC

  • LOOKING LIKE CENTRAL AMERICA? Loving the commons is not common. It’s unique to P

    http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-pico-union-trash-20131029,0,73522.storyLA LOOKING LIKE CENTRAL AMERICA?

    Loving the commons is not common. It’s unique to Protestantism and the absolute nuclear family (ANF). Everyone else ruins the commons.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-29 09:12:00 UTC

  • ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF THE ANGLO SAXON ABSOLUTE NUCLEAR FAMILY “The English are d

    ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF THE ANGLO SAXON ABSOLUTE NUCLEAR FAMILY

    “The English are descended from the Germanic conquerors who brought to England the ‘integrated nuclear family,’ in which nuclear families formed separate households, but stayed close to their relatives for mutual cooperation and defense. These people were illiterate, so we have no written records from those times, and we cannot know precisely how they organized their family life. But what we do know for sure is that over time the original Germanic family type developed into the ‘Absolute Nuclear Family,’ or ‘ANF,’ which we have today. It appears that the family type we have now has existed for about a thousand years.” — America 3.0. p51

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-24 05:05:00 UTC

  • FALL OF ROME (As I understand it) 1) Scale 2) Diversity 3) Insufficient Rates of

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/0578094185/ref=tsm_1_fb_lkTHE FALL OF ROME

    (As I understand it)

    1) Scale

    2) Diversity

    3) Insufficient Rates of Reproduction

    4) Plague

    5) Human Cost of Land vs Sea Empire

    6) Germanic Invasion

    7) Muslim destruction of the east

    8) Muslim destruction of mediterranean trade

    9) Hard Money (gold)

    10) Lack of “calculative institutions”

    (Thanks for the Reminder Skye)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-22 04:12:00 UTC

  • ON DIVERSITY When I use the term ‘diversity’, I am not terribly concerned with r

    ON DIVERSITY

    When I use the term ‘diversity’, I am not terribly concerned with race. I am concerned with culture: institutions, myths, traditions, habits, norms, metaphysical value judgement unstated but universal to the traditions.

    I care only about race in the senses that (a) people vote as racial blocs, and (b) people are less re-distributive with genetic distance. and (c) Racial groups tend (in the lower classes) to value in-group signals more that out-group signals, and sometimes intentionally so (keep ’em in strategy). Some cultures have very strong normative rules and do a better job of inclusion than we do. Some cultures and races are better at integrating that others. (None of us care too much about east Asian Americans).

    I care mostly about conflict and the distraction and expense of conflict over power, access to power, privilege, status signals, and opportunity. I would much prefer that we lived under a constitutional monarchy where we could live in our own little tribal villages, with our own laws, and the monarch was only interested in generating revenue for himself by getting us to trade and cooperate. And where we have no access to power, so the ONLY POWER we can exercise is in the market. This worked extremely well for Austrian Jews for example. And I’d prefer it worked extremely well for all of us.

    Diversity works. But diverse desire for control of others does not.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-20 09:44:00 UTC