Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • Do Convicted Criminals Deserve Human Rights Since They Willingly Deprived Someone Else Of Theirs?

    When someone violates NATURAL RIGHTS (life, liberty, property, by fraud, theft or violence) we punish them by removing their NATURAL RIGHTS, by  imprisoning them.   Natural rights are NECESSARY RIGHTS to engage in cooperation via exchanges within society: life, liberty, and property.

    We pay for our natural rights by forgoing our opportunity for fraud, theft and violence. 

    We also pay for access to opportunities to interact with others by paying the cost of effort to deonstrate manners, and the cost of forgone opportunities for stealing from others by respecting ethics and morals. 

    For violations of normative laws, we are ostracized from opportunity (boycotted) rather than punished or incarcerated. But we retain our natural rights as long as we can find someone to voluntarily exchange with us who does not refuse to boycott us because of our manners, ethics and morals.

    However, we do not remove anyone’s HUMAN RIGHTS any longer for any reason.  This is in no small part, because we are wealthy enough that deprivation from society and consumption alone are enough to coerce people into respecting both natural laws, and for normative laws.

    The international declaration of human rights was created in no small part to control the abuse of individuals by communist countries. It is a DESIRED list of rights.  This DESIRED list of rights is a CONTRACT between GOVERNMENTS. This contract is a TREATY.  This treaty demands that member countries hold governments accountable for the treatment of individuals, and to sanction those countries if they do not. Even to the point of replacing a government for their abuses of their individuals.

    It is important that we understad that this charter is a treaty by governments that like a treaty for the promise of mutual defense, binds other countries such that they are required to use legal, financial and economic sanctions against countries that violate the rights that the charter agrees all people in all countries, regardless of government, possess.

    In effect, as a worldwide treaty, it is a worldwide constitution for that limits the powers of governemnts.  This is waht RULE OF LAW means: it means that governemtns, and the people in them,  are limited to the actions that are allowed in their constitutions.  Rule of law does not mean that there are laws. It means that the government itself is bound by law.

    The Charter of human rights is a very simple document. It is vaguely divided into sections. The first few are restatements of NATURAL LAW. After that there are a variety of prohibitions against the government, that require that all people in society must be treated equally before the law.  That they have the right to live ordinary lives, marry,  have a family, make friends, earn a living, 

    Articles 23, 24, 25, and 26, were necessary to gain the support of the socialist and communist countries, in the same way that the north was required to allow slavery in order to gain the signatures of the south during the american civil war.  This is the primary problem with the declaration of human rights: is that these are not possible, not testable, and not achievable except in rare circumstances and for short periods of time – and they create a moral hazard as well as perverse incentives.  These are POSITIVE rights. And positive rights can only exist as preferences, not rights. 

    Article 29 specifies how you PAY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, and that is by granting them to other people equally.  Rights require exchange. Without exchange the term ‘rights’ is meaningless.  One does not HAVE human rights as if they fall from heavens. One is granted them by others, and pays for them over one’s lifetime by granting the same rights to others.

    Otherwise the document is not terribly different from the American Bill of Rights.

    What I hope to get accross here is that these are not divine rights, nor necesary and therefore natural rights, they are human rights, and human rights are those that we choose to require, by threat of force and economic punishment, that all governments must hold to.

    https://www.quora.com/Do-convicted-criminals-deserve-human-rights-since-they-willingly-deprived-someone-else-of-theirs

  • CAN ANYONE EDIT MY LATIN? “Proprietas est scriptura nobilitate, violentia est os

    CAN ANYONE EDIT MY LATIN?

    “Proprietas est scriptura nobilitate, violentia est os atramentum”

    “Property is the scripture of nobility, and violence is its ink”

    It’s not right. “os” isn’t right I don’t think.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-31 11:15:00 UTC

  • Can Socialism/marxism/communism Work Without The Forced Coercion Of The Productive And The Abrogation Of Private Property?

    You are getting terrible answers here, and your question is a bit confusing. So lets clarify terms a bit first, and see if we can get you a decent response:

    1) Socialism is defined as the state ownership of property, and central management of production and distribution.

    2) Communism is the absence of private property.

    Which is why your question seems odd. Instead I think  you mean ‘socialistic’ which is what we have in westen democracies today:

    3) Democratic redistributive socialism is private control of property with heavy progressive taxation of profits. This is what we do in most countries today. It preserves both the ability of individuals to conduct economic calculation and the incentives necessary for them to act in concert to fulfill the desires of others for purely selfish reasons.  THe general argument is predicated on the idea of Pareto Efficiency: that you can take something from someone and give it to something else, as long as it does not make him worse off.  Which in political terms means that the individual does not lose his incentive to produce at the same level as he does prior to the theft of his property by the government for redistribution to others.   The logic of this is that for businesses to grow and expand, consumers must have money to spend and that more additional money is made when they spend it, and so, at least in the end result, everyone is always getting better over time.  … I will not follow the entire economic cycle here but in theory and practice, to a limited extent, it is not a bad idea even if it feels immoral to many of us.

    WHY THE SOCIALIST NON-ECONOMY DOES NOT WORK

    1) Prices are an information system that tells people what they need to do to satisfy the needs of others.

    2) Without prices it is impossible for humans to plan the production of complex goods.

    3) Without prices people cannot have the information needed to have the incentives to engage in productive activity.

    4) any attempt to use computers and static means of production would be forced in to autarkic production (a need to be totally self sustaining) by relative decrease in productivity, followed by constant impoverishment (See Cuba).

    It does not work outside of the family, and only works within the family, because of parental dictatorship, and our instincts for consanguineous cooperation and care-taking.

    The world has abandoned both communism and socialism, and has assumed highly redistributive consumer capitalism   Which is ‘socialistic’ but not technically socialist.  This maintains prices, and incentives, and the ability to plan complex production while taking as much profit as possible from producers without destroying incentives.

    It appears that outside of the west, most countries have or will, adopt totalitarian consumer capitalism, which in practice, in China for example, is an oligarchy running major state industries and finance, and redistribution in the form of easy credit and public services to ‘everyone else’.   This seems to be the pattern. It is not any different from what we have in the USA,  it’s just more obvious.

    But no, since communism is the abandonment of private property, no it is not possible, ever, under any circumstance, which is why it’s been abandoned.

    Socialism cannot exist either because it is not possible for people to operate an economy without money, prices and property, becasue neigher economic calculation nor incentives can exist.

    But that has not stopped the desire for it.  Any more than people have stopped the desire for the absurdity of divinities and afterlife.  These ideas are a religious need, a spiritual need, in many people.  SO this is why they have turned to the religion of Postmodernism as the newest reformation of socialism.

    POSTMODERNISM

    In response to the total failure of the Communist and Socialist agendas, both in theory and in practice, most of the left intellectuals have adopted Postmodernism which is where the idea that

    Forgive the long quote here in exchange for its value:

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.  Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.” – Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (2004)


    COMMUNISM->SOCIALISM ->POSTMODERNISM ARE RELIGIONS

    “Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism). Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism). Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation). Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).” – Hicks.

    CHOMSKY IS THE ONLY LEFT PHILOSOPHER
    Because he has mastered the art of using untrue language.  That is his contribution to the new religion of Postmodernism. He invented linguistic tricks that could deceive human beings.

    Cheers
    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-Socialism-Marxism-Communism-work-without-the-forced-coercion-of-the-productive-and-the-abrogation-of-private-property

  • Libertarianism: In A Stateless Society Based On Private Property Rights, How Would You Avoid Imprisonment By Another Individual Purchasing All The Property Surrounding Your Property?

    A stateless society based upon property rights is a broader definition than Rothbardian Libertarianism, which would argue that you must compete via price for access to your land.

    But that is a relatively silly thing to say given the logic at hand:

    The questoin is, if you have property and it’s capable of being locked, then how did you get there? Were  you stealing access already?   Did you sell your land to someone without thinking of preserving that access?  Or lastly, did someone buy your access somehow and now desire to charge you for it?

    The problem is, that this circumstance actually doesn’t arise, unless you were committing an act of theft or rent in the first place.  And if that is the case, then you have obtained access to your property at a discount and as such must now pay full price for access, and pay the cost of your discount.

    I am not really sure this is a libertarian argument. it’s pretty ancient common law. Generally speaking most societies allow free passage on land boundaries just to avoid this problem.

    The libertarian argument doesn’t make instinctual moral sense to people because it sounds like an involuntary transfer without added value or compensation.  But the truth is that the circumstance can’t really occur unless you were obtaining access at a discount in the first place.

    https://www.quora.com/Libertarianism-In-a-stateless-society-based-on-private-property-rights-how-would-you-avoid-imprisonment-by-another-individual-purchasing-all-the-property-surrounding-your-property

  • Can Socialism/marxism/communism Work Without The Forced Coercion Of The Productive And The Abrogation Of Private Property?

    You are getting terrible answers here, and your question is a bit confusing. So lets clarify terms a bit first, and see if we can get you a decent response:

    1) Socialism is defined as the state ownership of property, and central management of production and distribution.

    2) Communism is the absence of private property.

    Which is why your question seems odd. Instead I think  you mean ‘socialistic’ which is what we have in westen democracies today:

    3) Democratic redistributive socialism is private control of property with heavy progressive taxation of profits. This is what we do in most countries today. It preserves both the ability of individuals to conduct economic calculation and the incentives necessary for them to act in concert to fulfill the desires of others for purely selfish reasons.  THe general argument is predicated on the idea of Pareto Efficiency: that you can take something from someone and give it to something else, as long as it does not make him worse off.  Which in political terms means that the individual does not lose his incentive to produce at the same level as he does prior to the theft of his property by the government for redistribution to others.   The logic of this is that for businesses to grow and expand, consumers must have money to spend and that more additional money is made when they spend it, and so, at least in the end result, everyone is always getting better over time.  … I will not follow the entire economic cycle here but in theory and practice, to a limited extent, it is not a bad idea even if it feels immoral to many of us.

    WHY THE SOCIALIST NON-ECONOMY DOES NOT WORK

    1) Prices are an information system that tells people what they need to do to satisfy the needs of others.

    2) Without prices it is impossible for humans to plan the production of complex goods.

    3) Without prices people cannot have the information needed to have the incentives to engage in productive activity.

    4) any attempt to use computers and static means of production would be forced in to autarkic production (a need to be totally self sustaining) by relative decrease in productivity, followed by constant impoverishment (See Cuba).

    It does not work outside of the family, and only works within the family, because of parental dictatorship, and our instincts for consanguineous cooperation and care-taking.

    The world has abandoned both communism and socialism, and has assumed highly redistributive consumer capitalism   Which is ‘socialistic’ but not technically socialist.  This maintains prices, and incentives, and the ability to plan complex production while taking as much profit as possible from producers without destroying incentives.

    It appears that outside of the west, most countries have or will, adopt totalitarian consumer capitalism, which in practice, in China for example, is an oligarchy running major state industries and finance, and redistribution in the form of easy credit and public services to ‘everyone else’.   This seems to be the pattern. It is not any different from what we have in the USA,  it’s just more obvious.

    But no, since communism is the abandonment of private property, no it is not possible, ever, under any circumstance, which is why it’s been abandoned.

    Socialism cannot exist either because it is not possible for people to operate an economy without money, prices and property, becasue neigher economic calculation nor incentives can exist.

    But that has not stopped the desire for it.  Any more than people have stopped the desire for the absurdity of divinities and afterlife.  These ideas are a religious need, a spiritual need, in many people.  SO this is why they have turned to the religion of Postmodernism as the newest reformation of socialism.

    POSTMODERNISM

    In response to the total failure of the Communist and Socialist agendas, both in theory and in practice, most of the left intellectuals have adopted Postmodernism which is where the idea that

    Forgive the long quote here in exchange for its value:

    “In postmodern discourse, truth is rejected explicitly and consistency can be a rare phenomenon. Consider the following pairs of claims.

    1) On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.

    2) On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.

    3) Values are subjective—but sexism and racism are really evil.

    4) Technology is bad and destructive—and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.

    5) Tolerance is good and dominance is bad—but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.

    There is a common pattern here: Subjectivism and relativism in one breath, dogmatic absolutism in the next.  Postmodernists are well aware of the contradictions—especially since their opponents relish pointing them out at every opportunity.

    They say that the West is deeply sexist, but they know very well that Western women were the first to get the vote, contractual rights, and the opportunities that most women in the world are still without.

    They say that Western capitalist countries are cruel to their poorer members, subjugating them and getting rich off them, but they know very well that the poor in the West are far richer than the poor anywhere else, both in terms of material assets and the opportunities to improve their condition.

    Postmodernism is therefore first a political movement, and a brand of politics that has only lately come to relativism.” – Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism (2004)


    COMMUNISM->SOCIALISM ->POSTMODERNISM ARE RELIGIONS

    “Both religion and socialism started with a comprehensive vision that they believed to be true but not based on reason (various prophets; Rousseau Both visions were then challenged by visions based on rational epistemologies (early naturalist critics of religion; early liberal critics of socialism). Both religion and socialism responded by saying that they could satisfy the criteria of reason (natural theology; scientific socialism). Both religion and socialism then ran into serious problems of logic and evidence (Hume’s attacks on natural theology; Mises’s and Hayek’s attacks on socialist calculation). Both then responded in turn by attacking reality and reason (Kant and Kierkegaard; postmodernists).” – Hicks.

    CHOMSKY IS THE ONLY LEFT PHILOSOPHER
    Because he has mastered the art of using untrue language.  That is his contribution to the new religion of Postmodernism. He invented linguistic tricks that could deceive human beings.

    Cheers
    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-Socialism-Marxism-Communism-work-without-the-forced-coercion-of-the-productive-and-the-abrogation-of-private-property

  • What Are Some Real Life Examples Of Anarchy On A Large Scale?

    There are none that involve a division of knowledge and labor.  The reason being that human beings are extremely hostile to involuntary transfers, and most humans perceive price competition via the local market – as members of an extended family – as involuntary transfer. They percieve quality variation as acceptable but not price competition.   They are correct in this perception, however. This involuntary transfer creates a virtuous cycle of innovation and price reduction, and greater participation in the market by consumers because of it, so we sanction this involuntary transfer by casting it as a virtue.

    Secondly, increasing the size of a market requires shared investment. People need a means of making this shared investment.  However, people will not make a shared investment if it is open to privatization. Governmnets have the ability to forcibly extract taxes from the market to use to construct infrastructure (largely, city walls and soldiers to defend them) as well as misuse tax money.  But they also have the ability to create legislative directions, which we call laws, to forbid privatization and free riding of these investments. As such these institutions (governments) make it easier to invest in commons (infrastructure) than would be possible without them, due to the pervasive nature of human free-riding, privatization and corruption.

    It is arguable that taxes (fees) of some minimum amount are legitimate fees for preventing free riding on the commons.  However, it has proven very difficult to control the expansion of the commons and the government, and therefore taxes.  As such governments have become instruments of rent-seeking and corruption every time humans have invented them for the purpose of avoiding free-riding and privatization.

    This should be the correct, or at least, most correct answer that we currently know how to provide to the near absence of anarchic social structures: to prevent free riding, which all humans find morally objectionable.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-real-life-examples-of-anarchy-on-a-large-scale

  • If Democracy Is Forcefully Enforced In A Country By Another, Wouldn’t It Be Called Dictatorship On The Enforcer’s Part?

    It is not dictatorship it is conquest.  Conquest is any alteration of the current allocation of property rights, property allocation  and norms, by force, whether that force be direct (violence and theft) or indirect (the promise of violence or theft in the event of non-compliance.)

    The justifying argument is generally that all other forms of government are even more corrupt that democracy.  This is questionable in practice as democracy seems to be a peculiarity of western civlization, and doesn’t seem to work very well elsewhere.  In india for example, corruption is so pervasive that the country stagnates. Whereas in China where the government is very strong, and now an oligarchy, the government managed to make everyone literate and move the economy much faster than India.

    Consumer capitalism and property rights are meaningful exports. THe tradition of democracy looks as though it has proven to be a failure outside of western Europe – where corruption is simply very naturally low due to ancient cultural reasons.

    https://www.quora.com/If-democracy-is-forcefully-enforced-in-a-country-by-another-wouldnt-it-be-called-dictatorship-on-the-enforcers-part

  • What Are Some Real Life Examples Of Anarchy On A Large Scale?

    There are none that involve a division of knowledge and labor.  The reason being that human beings are extremely hostile to involuntary transfers, and most humans perceive price competition via the local market – as members of an extended family – as involuntary transfer. They percieve quality variation as acceptable but not price competition.   They are correct in this perception, however. This involuntary transfer creates a virtuous cycle of innovation and price reduction, and greater participation in the market by consumers because of it, so we sanction this involuntary transfer by casting it as a virtue.

    Secondly, increasing the size of a market requires shared investment. People need a means of making this shared investment.  However, people will not make a shared investment if it is open to privatization. Governmnets have the ability to forcibly extract taxes from the market to use to construct infrastructure (largely, city walls and soldiers to defend them) as well as misuse tax money.  But they also have the ability to create legislative directions, which we call laws, to forbid privatization and free riding of these investments. As such these institutions (governments) make it easier to invest in commons (infrastructure) than would be possible without them, due to the pervasive nature of human free-riding, privatization and corruption.

    It is arguable that taxes (fees) of some minimum amount are legitimate fees for preventing free riding on the commons.  However, it has proven very difficult to control the expansion of the commons and the government, and therefore taxes.  As such governments have become instruments of rent-seeking and corruption every time humans have invented them for the purpose of avoiding free-riding and privatization.

    This should be the correct, or at least, most correct answer that we currently know how to provide to the near absence of anarchic social structures: to prevent free riding, which all humans find morally objectionable.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-real-life-examples-of-anarchy-on-a-large-scale

  • Fascism: What Are The Indicators Of A Fascist State?

    Your question is worded oddly. One could define a Fascist state. We can enumerate the properties of fascist states.  By use of the term ‘indicators’ you imply that either this convention isn’t something you’re familiar with, or that you are trying to establish the properties of a state that describe a trend.  If the former, then that’s possible. If the latter, it is very difficult to argue that any given policy is fascist versus a simple example of retaliatory trade policy.

    Fascism is the pursuit of Autarky (economic and resource indepenence) under a corporation called the state, which represents an extended tribe of people (nation) by direct intervention with industry and trade to give preference to autarkic exchanges despite pricing signals that would normally instruct members of any given industry to operate efficiently by buying by price alone.

    Fascism is merger of the state and industry such that industry adopts autarkic pricing, buying within the country, rather than market pricing.  This is what it means. That this political agenda has been accomplished by all manner of propaganda is not material, since all political efforts are accomplished by propaganda and some appeal to nationalism. People attach a great deal of emotional load to the term that is not relevant.  So it is easy to fail to understand this strategy.

    https://www.quora.com/Fascism-What-are-the-indicators-of-a-fascist-state

  • Property Rights are Themselves Property which Must be Acquired.

    [P]roperty rights are a means of cooperation between peers. Every means of acquiring them, other than organized violence, is an insipid appeal, an act of fraud, an involuntary transfer, from those who pay the cost of property rights by the preparation for, and threat of violence, by those who would obtain property rights at a discount. Enfranchisement was always how one earned property rights. Thats because they can’t be earned any other way. The weak, the lazy, the deceitful, all want property rights at a discount. Now, one could argue, that it is possible to PAY people in some way, to extend to you property rights. To HIRE your property rights. And we might argue that, that is, in part, what we use taxes for – but only if I get property rights in return. If I don’t get them, then I’ve given up my violence – meaning my opportunity to use violence for self interest instead of property rights for self interest – for free. It’s theft. Humor: Rothbard was a scam artist. 🙂