Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • On the Renting of Persons Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism)

    On the Renting of Persons

    Liberal thought (in the sense of classical liberalism) is based on the juxtaposition of consent to coercion. Autocracy and slavery were supposedly based on coercion whereas today’s political democracy and economic “employment system” are based on consent to voluntary contracts. This paper retrieves an almost forgotten dark side of contractarian thought that based autocracy and slavery on explicit or implicit voluntary contracts. To answer these “best case” arguments for slavery and autocracy, the democratic and antislavery movements forged arguments not simply in favor of consent but arguments that voluntary contracts to legally alienate aspects of personhood were invalid “even with consent”—which made the underlying rights inherently inalienable. Once understood, those arguments have the perhaps “unintended consequence” of ruling out today’s self-rental contract, the employer employee contract.

    Also see, On Property Theory,

    http://www.ellerman.org/on-property-theory/

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-02 17:11:00 UTC

  • Is nearly all of philosophy then, outside of logic, an artful construct for the

    Is nearly all of philosophy then, outside of logic, an artful construct for the purpose of justifying theft?

    One can justify suppression of, prevention of, and restitution for, the taking of discounts. (thefts)

    One can justify the selection of one priority of investment over another. But one cannot argue for the necessity of a monopoly of investments. Nor the mandatory enforcement of participation in investments, other than the suppression of free riding.

    One can argue the necessity for a homogeneity – monopoly – of property rights for the purpose of logically resolving disputes over property and contract – albeit, private property solves that problem, and articulated shareholder rights, retains that ability even under complexity.

    But once a monopoly of property rights exists, one cannot argue the necessity for a monopoly of law making. In fact, logic and evidence suggest precisely the opposite is true: that laws evolve and evolve best under the common law, since they must be interpreted by ordinary citizens, and are open to constant revision without external approval as the world evolves.

    The failure of the common law was (a) its usurpation by the state, and (b) failure to define property rights sufficiently in the face of industrialization. (c) its use by the middle class to dispossess the aristocracy, and consequential use by the proletarians and feminists to dispossess the middle classes.

    Philosophy is quite simple really. It’s only complicated if you’re trying to lie. And theft requires lying. And lying is best covered by obscurity.

    Cheers.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-01 15:58:00 UTC

  • LET MY PEOPLE GO! If your government services are so good, then why do you need

    LET MY PEOPLE GO!

    If your government services are so good, then why do you need a monopoly?

    Why would a government be afraid of competition? Why do governments demonstrate that they are afraid of competition?

    Are you afraid someone would do better than you?

    Let my people go.

    Nullification, secession, insurrection, revolution, civil war.

    It’s a five card deck of choices. Choose one.

    Let my people go.

    Let my people go.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-31 12:11:00 UTC

  • If a man must pay for a child at great personal cost to himself, and a woman and

    If a man must pay for a child at great personal cost to himself, and a woman and the child have a right to the standard of living prior to divorce, and he cannot export this expense to the state, then why does a woman have the right to export the cost of her single motherhood to the state?

    A man cannot chose whether or not he is to father a child. Women are no longer economic victims, but have both saturated their distribution in the economy, and forced men out of the economy such that more women are both voters and workers than are men. So we cannot say that women are disadvantaged. Just the opposite. It is true that men dominate the upper margins, but men dominate nowhere else in society.

    This is an inequality of justice. A double standard. Given the dissolution of the family, and our emphasis on individualism, it is only jus that men export their children’s cost to the state just as women export their children’s cost to the state. No?

    I don’t really see any moral case for child or spousal support. There isnt any evidence that it’s necessary. It is disproportionally more punitive to men, who have shorter working careers, and endure disproportionate economic risk.

    I mean, if we have universal socialized health coverage, why not universal socialized child coverage. Why not a minimum guaranteed income?

    In that world, men can contribute to a household or not, but they carry their productivity with them. So any woman whose nest he shares, gains from his productivity, but loses at his departure. His income is a luxury. A perk. A benefit, not a necessity.

    The point of my argument is that property rights in a world where the individual, not the family, is the rule, and where all costs are highly socialized, will be one in which it will be increasingly difficult for us to treat evolutionary norms and morals dependent upon previous economic political and social means of production and reproduction, as criteria for predicting human behavior.

    I wouldn’t mind a world where women could not become vampires on males, and where all rights were in fact, equal.

    I also realize that this is the only way to restore male-female relations. But I suspect it is too late. And that the more likely development will be a caste system like we see in the northeast, with white/jewish/asian elites and mixed and brown everyone else – with token representatives of those groups permitted into the upper castes as a means of preserving the illusion of meritocracy.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-30 15:13:00 UTC

  • CONTRA HIGGS’ CRITICISM OF LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY (important piece) The most effec

    CONTRA HIGGS’ CRITICISM OF LIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY

    (important piece)

    The most effective form of resistance to the state is organized mystical RELIGION, predicated upon FAITH. Religions determine the moral limits of what a state can impose on its people. That is the POLITICAL PURPOSE of religion. Americans have succeeded in resisting government intrusion more so than europeans precisely because americans have retained religiosity as a means of fortifying the family and the civic society against the expansionary state.

    The most important property of IDEOLOGY is that it NOT be open to critical argument, while at the same time it must be “activating’ to the base. Because the purpose of IDEOLOGY is the accumulation of power, by means that are unassailable by critics. Ideology is just post-monarchial, democratic religion.

    The most important property of PHILOSOPHY is explanatory power: the ability to reorder the values of objects and relations in order to provide us with utility in response to the accumulation of new knowledge. Philosophy is a high barrier, and must be converted by public intellectuals into ideology to function as a means of transferring power.

    The most important property of SCIENCE is an increase in the inventory of facts that can describe causal relations as they factually correspond with reality. Science has been notoriously INEFFECTIVE at resisting the state, and in most cases, has accomplished the opposite: to replace the church and the previous status held by the church in the determination of the moral code, with academia. Except where the church and the state were competitors in the past, academia and the state are now dependent allies.

    It is a mistake for academics, intellectuals, scientists, and often philosophers (although not this one), to attribute to religion and ideology those properties which render them useless as a means of obtaining or resisting POWER.

    The MI crew, unfortunately, with full intent, took the strategy of the marxists and used the internet to promote rothbardian IDEOLOGY. This was so successful that Cato had to reverse its prior insularity, and GMU has had consider searching for new terminology for both libertarianism and Austrian Economics.

    This ideology was unsuccessful in obtaining sufficient power to enact change, because the moral content of Rothbard’s liberty was regressive compared to that of the aristocratic ethics of the high trust society that we call the christian west. Something which I feel I have largely corrected. so the Mises Institute program was unsuccessful because it was predicated on DEMONSTRABLY IMMORAL PRINCIPLES.

    Meanwhile no one has advanced the question of the business cycle sufficiently, (although PSST could have), and no one has advanced political or moral theory in the libertarian/Austrian community AT ALL other than Hoppe, and Hoppe’s arguments are buried in layers of unnecessary rationality and loadings that likewise hide his genius.

    As such, I’m glad Robert Higgs can make so many errors in less than 300 words.

    1- religion, ideology, philosophy, science and prescriptions for institutional models are all very different forms of advocacy for different people, with different knowledge and abilities. It is unwise to criticize them.

    2 – Ideology IS MORE IMPORTANT than anything other than religion. Because of the number of people it influences. TO fail to understand this, and to attack one’s religious or ideological or philosophical, wing is to confuse facts with POWER. And politics is POWER.

    3 – The correct response is to ask:

    (a) is that religious argument holding the state at bay and setting the moral terms of political discourse?

    (b) is that ideological argument succeeding in obtaining further acolytes, attention, publicity and political power?

    (c) Does that philosophical argument advance our argumentative ability against other philosophers, and the ideologies that develop as a result of their works?

    (d) Does this scientific explanation provide us with new knowledge that we can incorporate into our theory of action, which we call ‘philosophy’, or it’s means of propagation ‘ideology’, or its means of resistance ‘religion’?

    (e) If not, then one has nothing intelligent to say.

    Internecine warfare in the libertarian movement is the result of the tragic failure of anyone who seeks liberty to solve the problem of the social sciences, or articulate the cumulative effects of state intervention on long term assets we call ‘social and human capital’, and the ability of people to maintain innovation and therefore an expanding quality of life.

    The only advancement in liberty has come from the propagation of ideology on the one hand, and the resistance of the state by religion. In all other aspects, except those few that PeterB seems to regularly mention such as Olstrom’s; and a few contributions by Bryan and Tyler; or the insight into the structure of political incentives by Hoppe, the libertarian scholarly, and intellectual program has been a demonstrable failure.

    Instead, the only success we can claim has been achieved by conservatives who have set the terms of moral debate, and by that moral debate brought our government to a standstill; and the various anthropological and biological and neurological sciences have demonstrated that the conservative vision of man is and was accurate. Otherwise political science, and economics have done nothing for us at all in holding or obtaining liberty.

    Only a fool thinks politics is run by science. It is run by wealth, power, morals and argument, and science is but a convenient pawn for the furtherance of the same.

    That’s just how it is. Stating otherwise would be UNSCIENTIFIC.

    I’ll debate anyone in the community on these issues in an attempt to fix the current state of libertarian philosophy, and in an effort to, in political science, advance liberty, but I suspect vested interests are more preciously held than new truths are desired.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-28 12:46:00 UTC

  • “LET MY PEOPLE GO” What then, is the difference, between the enslavement of the

    “LET MY PEOPLE GO”

    What then, is the difference, between the enslavement of the rabble for the satisfaction of the nobility, and the enslavement of the productive for the satisfaction of the rabble?

    “LET MY PEOPLE, GO!”

    Why should the rabble be herded and exploited for the benefit of the upper middle classes. Why should the middle and upper middle classes be herded and exploited for the benefit of the lower and elite classes?

    “LET MY PEOPLE GO! LET US DIVIDE!

    NULLIFY. RESIST. REVOLT. SECEDE!

    LET MY PEOPLE, GO!

    We have as much a right to pursue our interests as an extended family than every other people has the right to its identity and success.

    “PHARAOH!, PHARAOH!, LET MY PEOPLE, GO!”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-26 08:56:00 UTC

  • On the Reformation of Praxeology

    Praxeological analysis, and Austrian economics, are important because they make visible all transfers, and whether or not they are against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. Aggregate macro economics and Keynesian economics are important because they obscure the transfer of goods against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. But, both of these methods: Aggregate Keynesian and Austrian Micro, are actually moral forms of analysis, more so than they are different sciences. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is and must be private, then moral decisions are a function of voluntary or involuntary transfer of property. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is owned communally and we all rent it and gain commissions on its use for the benefit of all (as under democratic socialism) , then the distribution of proceeds from the rentals is more important to the moral code than ownership and right to such proceeds. The collectivist proposition is that all property is owned communally and that we merely lease it from the commons, and gain some portions of our commissions on it. The libertarian proposition is that all property is privately owned, and we voluntarily contribute to commons at our own discretion. Any rational analysis of the evidence of economic inquiry from either the communal or private spectrum will illustrate that both forms of research have largely approached the same answers and discoveries of the increasingly complex properties of economic activity, over time. The difference remains the choice of moral bias determined by the allocation of property rights in a collective body under the same territorial monopoly of property definitions and means of dispute resolution. The scientific method is likewise a moral discipline. It prevents the use of a wide variety of errors and misrepresentations.  This moral discipline will over time, because of the competition of ideas, suppress errors and fraud. Just as the market, over time, will suppress errors and fraud. The simplistic means by which the scientific method succeeds in this moral objective, is the requirement for operational language.  That is, a set of observable actions open to confirmation and falsification. Praxeology, likewise implicitly mandates the moral requirement that we can express any action in observable, empirical form.  It is likewise a requirement for operational language. Both the physical sciences, and praxeological science, place a requirement for operational language on all scientific and economic statements. This requirement for EMPIRICISM is what renders praxeology a moral science. As such: (a) Human moral intuitions, instincts, and norms are universally, a set of prescriptions enumerating the uses and non uses of property. (b) We can only make visible whether any action is moral or not, by operational language: determination of whether any transfer of property was voluntary. (c) The reason that we can perform a test of voluntary transfer is that as human beings we are marginally indifferent, and can through subjective experience, objectively determine whether transfers are rational for the actor. All the logical disciplines are moral disciplines, and all are instrumental methods, and we not only desire, but require these instrumental methods, because we in fact do argue and must argue, and must rely upon these methods, because those methods determine the use of property – firstly the property of our minds, bodies and time. We require property – albeit the distribution of property rights between individuals, families and commons varies greatly depending upon the structure of production and the structure of the family, and the homogeneity or diversity of the  population in all of the above. But regardless of the distribution of normative, or descriptive ownership in property between the collective and the individual, This is the appropriate and defensible argument in favor of praxeology. Mises intuited it. Rothbard artfully defended it. But they had to because they lacked the knowledge that we have today. And instead, unfortunately, they relied upon a priori, deductive certainty. A reliance which doomed praxeology to failure in broader economic circles – by simple virtue of the fact that all of economics cannot be deduced from the axiom of action without empirical support. Very little can be deduced from it. Quite the opposite. But, while we can deduce very little, we can TEST ANY ECONOMIC STATEMENT praxeologically for rationality and voluntary transfer.  As such praxeology is in fact, an empirical science, which we test by sympathy, not a rational one one. They got it wrong. Sorry.  Don’t hang onto whether they were right or not. Revel in the fact that we now have the ability to understand that praxeology is a means of measuring and TESTING all human action for whether or not it is voluntary and rational (moral) or involuntary and non-rational (immoral).

  • On the Reformation of Praxeology

    Praxeological analysis, and Austrian economics, are important because they make visible all transfers, and whether or not they are against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. Aggregate macro economics and Keynesian economics are important because they obscure the transfer of goods against the desires of those from whom property is transferred. But, both of these methods: Aggregate Keynesian and Austrian Micro, are actually moral forms of analysis, more so than they are different sciences. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is and must be private, then moral decisions are a function of voluntary or involuntary transfer of property. If one subscribes to the proposition that all property is owned communally and we all rent it and gain commissions on its use for the benefit of all (as under democratic socialism) , then the distribution of proceeds from the rentals is more important to the moral code than ownership and right to such proceeds. The collectivist proposition is that all property is owned communally and that we merely lease it from the commons, and gain some portions of our commissions on it. The libertarian proposition is that all property is privately owned, and we voluntarily contribute to commons at our own discretion. Any rational analysis of the evidence of economic inquiry from either the communal or private spectrum will illustrate that both forms of research have largely approached the same answers and discoveries of the increasingly complex properties of economic activity, over time. The difference remains the choice of moral bias determined by the allocation of property rights in a collective body under the same territorial monopoly of property definitions and means of dispute resolution. The scientific method is likewise a moral discipline. It prevents the use of a wide variety of errors and misrepresentations.  This moral discipline will over time, because of the competition of ideas, suppress errors and fraud. Just as the market, over time, will suppress errors and fraud. The simplistic means by which the scientific method succeeds in this moral objective, is the requirement for operational language.  That is, a set of observable actions open to confirmation and falsification. Praxeology, likewise implicitly mandates the moral requirement that we can express any action in observable, empirical form.  It is likewise a requirement for operational language. Both the physical sciences, and praxeological science, place a requirement for operational language on all scientific and economic statements. This requirement for EMPIRICISM is what renders praxeology a moral science. As such: (a) Human moral intuitions, instincts, and norms are universally, a set of prescriptions enumerating the uses and non uses of property. (b) We can only make visible whether any action is moral or not, by operational language: determination of whether any transfer of property was voluntary. (c) The reason that we can perform a test of voluntary transfer is that as human beings we are marginally indifferent, and can through subjective experience, objectively determine whether transfers are rational for the actor. All the logical disciplines are moral disciplines, and all are instrumental methods, and we not only desire, but require these instrumental methods, because we in fact do argue and must argue, and must rely upon these methods, because those methods determine the use of property – firstly the property of our minds, bodies and time. We require property – albeit the distribution of property rights between individuals, families and commons varies greatly depending upon the structure of production and the structure of the family, and the homogeneity or diversity of the  population in all of the above. But regardless of the distribution of normative, or descriptive ownership in property between the collective and the individual, This is the appropriate and defensible argument in favor of praxeology. Mises intuited it. Rothbard artfully defended it. But they had to because they lacked the knowledge that we have today. And instead, unfortunately, they relied upon a priori, deductive certainty. A reliance which doomed praxeology to failure in broader economic circles – by simple virtue of the fact that all of economics cannot be deduced from the axiom of action without empirical support. Very little can be deduced from it. Quite the opposite. But, while we can deduce very little, we can TEST ANY ECONOMIC STATEMENT praxeologically for rationality and voluntary transfer.  As such praxeology is in fact, an empirical science, which we test by sympathy, not a rational one one. They got it wrong. Sorry.  Don’t hang onto whether they were right or not. Revel in the fact that we now have the ability to understand that praxeology is a means of measuring and TESTING all human action for whether or not it is voluntary and rational (moral) or involuntary and non-rational (immoral).

  • THE NAP IS A TEST, PRIVATE PROPERTY IS A THEORY, AND HERE ARE THE CAUSES AND CON

    THE NAP IS A TEST, PRIVATE PROPERTY IS A THEORY, AND HERE ARE THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.

    ( @MATT Zwolinski : Your answer.)

    ( @ Stephan Kinsella: I ‘m going to try to improve your language a bit, because the problem you’re having is the use of the term ‘fundamental’. In ratio-scientific terms, in the operational language of action theory and test are the appropriate terms.)

    ——-NAP IS A TEST NOT A THEORY———

    The NAP is an epistemic test of whether private property rights have been violated. It is an exceptional test. But that is the limit of it. One still needs a theory to test.

    —THE THEORY IS ‘ALL’ RIGHTS ARE PROPERTY RIGHTS—-

    The theory is that ALL RIGHTS can be reduced to property rights. Even commons can be reduced to shares of individual property rights. Even norms can be reduced to property rights.

    ——-VIOLATIONS OF RIGHTS—————

    (Theory of morality and law) (No diagram yet, sorry)

    I. CAUSAL AXES

    Two axis:

    Axis 1 : Means of Influence.

    Axis 2 : Deception: the truth or falsehood of statements.

    II. WEAPNS OF INFLUENCE

    We humans have invented only three weapons of influence.

    Influence 1) Force – (Violence and Law)

    Influence 2) Exclusion – (Moral Rules and Boycotting)

    Influence 3) Remuneration – (Exchange and Commerce)

    III. DISCOUNTS

    However:

    Discount 1) we can use permutations of the above to extract DISCOUNTS.

    Discount 2) we can use deception to extract discounts.

    IV. FORMS OF DISCOUNT

    1. Violence (asymmetry of force)

    2. Theft (asymmetry of control)

    3. Fraud (false information)

    4. Omission (Omitting information)

    5. Obstruction (Inhibiting someone else’s transaction)

    6. Externalization (externalizing costs of any transaction)

    7. Free Riding (using externalities for self benefit)

    8. Socializing Losses (externalization to commons)

    9. Privatizing Gains (appropriation of commons)

    10. Rent Seeking (organizational free riding)

    11. Corruption ( organized rent seeking)

    12. Conspiracy (organized indirect theft)

    12. Extortion (Organized direct theft)

    13. War (organized violence)

    ——-NAP’S WEAKNESS——–

    The NAP, as used in libertarian ideological discourse, suffers from the weakness of the low trust society, in that it relies entirely upon Ostracization to suppress various forms of fraud.

    The high trust, aristocratic egalitarian society of the northern Protestant west, relies on the ADDITION of these moral constraints to the NAP:

    a) Truth: Truthful statements

    b) Symmetry: Complete statements

    c) Warranty: proof of true and complete statements.

    d) Proof of Work : that one profits only from adding value (doing work).

    e) Externality: Other than by competition you may not externalize costs.

    1) Respect property.

    2) Speak the whole truth.

    3) Your word is your warranty, and you will be held to it.

    4) And you must actual do work not profit from misfortune.

    —HIGH TRUST IS A PROHIBITION ON DISCOUNTS—

    These rules prohibit discounts. The only reason to eschew violence and engage in exchange is if ALL discounts are prohibited from the market, and therefore, by consequence, all improvements are in the construction and distribution of goods, and NOT in the verbal means of selling those goods.

    —AS SUCH ALL CONFLICT IS PRESSED INTO THE MARKET —

    Not the market for words, but the market for goods and services. And since the only possible means of competing is innovation in production and distribution, then such societies will innovate in production and distribution faster than all others. So not only do such rules that place a prohibition on both violence, theft, and discounts foster peace and prosperity, it fosters innovation, and trust.

    —THE GHETTO VS THE ARISTOCRACY —

    This is the ethic of the high trust society, and the only society every to invent and employ liberty – the protestant west. It may be unclear that the Absolute Nuclear family is yet again another institution that forbids discounts. And that is why ANF families from northern european cultures prefer liberty, and NF and Traditional families from southern Europe prefer more of the state: because ANF Families suppress all free riding and NF and Traditional families do not.

    ANF and property rights are eugenic and ostracizing. They are the rights of aristocratic egalitarians. The rights of those who can compete. Those that cannot compete do not seek those rights as they view free riding and rent seeking at the very least to be necessary for competitive survival.

    That is all that there is to understand about politics.

    —ROTHBARD GAVE US REDUCTION TO PROPERTY RIGHTS–

    But the rest is weak.

    Rothbardian’s NAP is the ethic of the ghetto. It is not the high trust ethic of the northern europeans, and certainly not a sufficient ethic to allow a low friction common law society to function without a strong state.

    For this reason the NAP is insufficient, and it is the reason for the failure of rothbardian, libertarian ethics to gain any acceptance in the population.

    The reason being, that it’s too low a bar.

    As far as I know, this is the current state of our knowledge.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-21 12:18:00 UTC

  • THE LEFT: “FOOD SHORTAGES, MOB VIOLENCE, ARBITRARY EXECUTIONS” “The French Revol

    THE LEFT: “FOOD SHORTAGES, MOB VIOLENCE, ARBITRARY EXECUTIONS”

    “The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised — “liberty, equality, fraternity” — what they actually produced were food shortages, mob violence, and dictatorial powers that included arbitrary executions, extending even to their own leaders, such as Robespierre, who died under the guillotine.

    In the 20th century, the most sweeping vision of the Left — Communism — spread over vast regions of the world and encompassed well over a billion human beings. Of these, millions died of starvation in the Soviet Union under Stalin and tens of millions in China under Mao.” – Sowell

    Source date (UTC): 2013-12-21 06:25:00 UTC