Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • PLEASE IGNORE THE TINFOIL HATS IN FRONT OF THE UNION JACK I live in downtown Kie

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-uprising-we-can-break-protesters-legs-no-one-will-punish-us-the-law-is-on-our-side-9147903.html?loadcomments=true#7f9da0e79d38436da5ea885464fd05b0NONSENSE – PLEASE IGNORE THE TINFOIL HATS IN FRONT OF THE UNION JACK

    I live in downtown Kiev. In the old city (Podol) There is no chaos here. I’ve been up in Maidan at the stage and it’s basically a cross between a keg party and a church ceremony now.

    We couldn’t get western attention here for months, and then all of a sudden we lose a lot of people in one day, the media finds bread and circus for the peasantry, and the average western clown is an expert on events here.

    Russians (and Ukrainians – prior to 1900 known as the Rusyas ), have a bravado bit of nonsense on the scale of Southern Italians. And western news media, always looking to make viewers feel morally and intellectually superior, take advantage of it.

    When realistically, compare Kiev to Venezuela, and look at the body language of the protesters alone. These are gentle people tired of corruption. They just want freedom from an oppressive state.

    Unless Russia walks into Donetsk with tanks, all will be boring and fine here.

    They’ve asked for Volunteers to clean up the main square starting on March 1st and I’m sure we’ll all chip in and take care of it. And it will be a CIVIC PEOPLE who CARE ABOUT THEIR CULTURE, and who don’t expect the government to do anything to help, that will make it happen.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-24 12:45:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE : PUNISHMENT IS NOT AN ACHIEVEMENT – it’s housekeeping. It’s all well an

    UKRAINE : PUNISHMENT IS NOT AN ACHIEVEMENT – it’s housekeeping.

    It’s all well and good to punish the old guard that preyed upon the people. On the other hand, retribution is not a strategy for fixing Ukraine. Nothing will be different. In fact, obsession with the past is merely a foolish or lazy person’s way of failing to deal with the future.

    A new president and new parliament will do no good without reforming those aspects of life that directly affect the ability of Ukrainian people to prosper.

    1. Reform the judiciary. Add the Jury system. Look at the court data. Hire Ukrainian expatriates from German and English legal systems to audit the judiciary and to determine likely areas of corruption. Although most english and german speaking legal firms in Kiev have written extensively on how to cure Ukrainian judges’ notorious disrespect for the rule of law. This only requires honest effort. There is no secret here. Corruption in the judiciary is an open secret that everyone knows – and most people in western countries understand how to fix.

    2. Reform the Police on the Georgian or Russian model – pay the good one’s eliminate the others. Be merciless about reforming them. Any person can bring suit against an officer. Use citizen juries to try the police officers. If a policeman is fired by the jury, then he is permanently ineligible for service in any capacity in the government. This is sufficient incentive to protect the people from police corruption.

    3. “Universal Legal Standing Against Corruption” Treat corruption (even your own) as a crime against your people,and punish all of it, from the most political cheat, to the simplest credit thief, as a threat to the future of Ukraine and its people.

    4. Obtain the “universal right to bear arms” – it is the only source of freedom. Americans call this right “shall issue”. Meaning that the government must issue unless there is a reason not to. Do not settle for requiring a reason. Freedom from evil people in government is the only reason you need to bear arms. Ukraine is one of the only countries that understands the power of armed citizenry in securing its freedom from oppression. An armed society is not only a polite society but it is also a free society.

    5. Commit to a 10 year television and education campaign on ‘truth, trust and elimination of corruption in all walks of life.’ This is, believe it or not, one of the most important things that you can do in a low trust society like Ukraine. (If I spoke the language I’d drive initiative for it myself.) Ukrainians in my opinion are the best and most good people in the world. But trust is a technology. It can be taught like any other technology. And Ukrainians’ need to understand how to use that technology, rather than rely on centuries of experience without trust.

    GOOD ADVICE

    1. Try to get younger people into office who do not have adult experience under the Soviet model. It is very hard to change our intuitions about what we learn in our youth.

    2. Start teaching ‘rule of law’, ‘the common law’, commercial ethics, checkbook management, basic accounting, and basic economics to all students in all schools at an early age.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-24 06:30:00 UTC

  • THERE ARE BUT THREE WAYS TO CONTROL A PEOPLE: 1) MORAL ARGUMENT i – Tools: Relig

    THERE ARE BUT THREE WAYS TO CONTROL A PEOPLE:

    1) MORAL ARGUMENT

    i – Tools: Religion. Shaming. Rallying. Deception. Obscurantism.

    ii – Threat:Inclusion and Exclusion from the benefit of group membership.

    iii – Our defense: Reason, Science, Propertarianism (the logic of cooperation)

    2) VIOLENCE

    i – Tools: War. Law. Police.

    ii – Threat: death, deprivation, takings.

    iii – Our defense: The Militia. Rule of law. Common Law. Constitution. Property Rights.

    3) REMUNERATION

    i – Tools : Fiat money. Fiat Credit. Taxation. (extraction)

    ii – Threat : deprivation. poverty.

    iii – Our Defense: Precious metals. private money. digital currency.

    A PEOPLE MUST POSSESS THESE DEFENSES TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM THE PREDATORY STATE.

    a) Reason. Science. Propertarianism.

    b) The Militia. Rule of Law. Common Law. Constitution. Property Rights.

    c) Natural Money. Private money. Digital Money.

    IT IS AFTER THE PEOPLE POSSESS THESE THINGS, AND ONLY AFTER, THAT IT IS SAFE TO USE THE STATE FOR MUTUAL INSURANCE AND CARE-TAKING.

    The government is a very dangerous thing. Like all dangerous things, it may have benefits. But only if the dangers are handled with the extreme caution that they deserve. Like all harmful things, the state will harm those who attempt to gain its benefits without paying the high cost of its careful handling.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-23 13:42:00 UTC

  • “That little militia did more for their freedom than democracy ever had. I think

    –“That little militia did more for their freedom than democracy ever had. I think that’s what I learned from watching Ukrainians revolt.”–

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-23 08:35:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE. THE MILITIA : EVERY ABLE BODIED MAN Ukraine made a militia out of ad ho

    UKRAINE. THE MILITIA : EVERY ABLE BODIED MAN

    Ukraine made a militia out of ad hoc barricades, old tires, molotovs, custom made armor, surplus helmets and construction gear.

    Large groups of Ukrainians are patrolling the streets for troublemakers. The police are just ‘gone’. Invisible. They are wearing soviet era helmets, makeshift armor, and carrying baseball bats and lengths of pipe.

    No bravado. Just doing it.

    If every able bodied (and sane) man (and woman) is armed, and trained, then your government cannot oppress you. If your government does not want every able bodied (and sane) man (and woman) armed and trained, then you have to wonder why they would fear such a thing. If you aren’t willing to commit yourself to being armed and trained (if sane) then you cannot possibly claim that you have earned your property rights. ‘Cause you haven’t. You’re a parasite on the commitment, risk and effort of others.

    Pacifist libertarianism is just an excuse for free riding: parasitism.

    If you don’t have a militia, you don’t have freedom.

    You merely have permission.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-22 16:08:00 UTC

  • Meanwhile, in your home city of Seattle, Lenin’s statue, while not toppled, had

    Meanwhile, in your home city of Seattle, Lenin’s statue, while not toppled, had its hands painted red, to symbolize the bloodshed

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-22 13:06:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT RESIGNS. USA SHOULD BE NEXT. This is how it is done America.

    UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT RESIGNS. USA SHOULD BE NEXT.

    This is how it is done America. Not with press. Not with speeches. Not with threats. Not with begging and pleading. But with a dedicated few, willing to die to prove the illegitimacy of the government.

    Why does the right care? BECAUSE THEY DO THE FIGHTING.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-22 08:15:00 UTC

  • MORALITY BACK INTO ECONOMICS – ONE POST AT A TIME (response to ‘economist’s view

    http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2014/02/forget-the-minimum-wage-job-losses-its-government-cuts-thatll-getyou-mad.htmlADDING MORALITY BACK INTO ECONOMICS – ONE POST AT A TIME

    (response to ‘economist’s view’)

    NOTE: current macro economic models assumes either (a) a nation state or (b) universalism. But it does not account for moral differences in a heterogeneous polity. My argument is that these models are increasingly predictive under artificially heated economies, and increasingly NON-PREDICTIVE under increasingly normal economies. The rate of change in wealth determines our tolerance for ‘immoral’ behavior. The lower the rate of change, the less tolerance, and the rate of contraction determines the level of intolerance.

    I believe that this is one of the missing ‘laws’ of macro economic analysis.

    Moral heterogeneity is a bad thing. It’s not a matter of race. it’s a matter of morality and identity. Race just happens to influence identity and morality a lot. Less so in the UK than the States for example. Less so in Canada than the UK. For obvious reasons: density and rates of change.

    — POST FOLLOWS—

    –“I love the clarity and consistency of the posts on this blog. But Cosmopolitan morality is not universal. It has a specific ideological origin. And it’s both a luxury good, and a status symbol, and symbol of conspicuous consumption.

    I’ve been arguing since ’06 I think, that people DEMONSTRATE by their actions that they will absorb significant personal harm, in order to ‘punish’ cheaters and free riders.

    At present, the financial community is an ally against the state. And the state has very, very bad polling numbers. Trust (polling number on our civil interactions) has declined rapidly since the 60’s along with the increase in our homogeneity of interest.

    So the people in both the USA and in Europe, are rebelling against what they see as ‘immoral’ behavior both by the state, and in the case of Europe, the low trust high corruption southern europeans. And in America, the high trust protestants against the low trust everyone-else.

    ‘We’ are not a family. There is no Cosmopolitan ‘we’. We are an empire.

    Cooperation is very different from redistribution. And redistribution is only tolerable if it does not produce immoral consequences. We can agree to cooperate if we have different objectives. But we cannot sacrifice across trust, family, race and cultural boundaries.

    We can all agree that the means of redistributing money via the financial system instead of directly to consumers is simply an artifact of previous technical limitations – limitations that we no longer have. MMT looks like a partial answer to the problem since we can issue debit cards and accounts to individuals at near zero cost. And we could even eliminate the financial system as a distribution network.

    This has the benefit of making work a means of obtaining luxuries, rather than absolute necessities. And it removes employment from consideration in policy, and instead refocuses us on productivity.

    The problem is, that the only way that will be enacted over moral objection, and over economic constraints, is to eliminate all entitlement programs, and all social service programs, and roll them into the new model.

    The conservatives will go for this solution if it means disbanding interference – including in the labor and social market, by the state.

    The truth test then, is whether people on the left are actually interested in such conversion of the economy and polity, or whether it’s just political power over the productive class. “–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-21 08:17:00 UTC

  • BOILING THE HUMAN IN TAX –“VAT is an excellent tax. I can imagine that the [sal

    BOILING THE HUMAN IN TAX

    –“VAT is an excellent tax. I can imagine that the [sales pitch] to business went something like this: don’t worry, we are not taxing you just the consumer. The reality is that claiming even a penny back from Her Majesty is the most tedious, time destroying, unproductive waste of time. Managing all of these receipts is insulting, but I will get every penny back that my accountant allows. Her Majesty is a royal pain in the ass.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-21 07:27:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE: BBC TELLS THE SIMPLE STRATEGY : CUT OFF THE MONEY —“The business clan

    UKRAINE: BBC TELLS THE SIMPLE STRATEGY : CUT OFF THE MONEY

    —“The business clans are the Achilles’ heels of the regime. With smart sanctions, targeting financial assets and judicious visa bans, including on members of the Yanukovych family, the West could help to break the status quo in Ukraine. Big businesses need access to European markets. Further instability will devalue their assets. Cutting off European oxygen would mean that the cost of doing business under a Yanukovych presidency would be too high. This is the main leverage that the EU and the US have.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-20 17:59:00 UTC