Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • SEA IN A THIMBLE “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give yo

    http://trib.al/bXkp66A SEA IN A THIMBLE

    “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. – Thomas Sowell, via Libertarianism.org.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-07 15:44:00 UTC

  • CONSERVATIVES WANT AN END TO TRANSFERS? Conservatives want to engage in exchange

    CONSERVATIVES WANT AN END TO TRANSFERS?

    Conservatives want to engage in exchange rather than transfer.

    But what is it that they desire in exchange?

    They desire aderence to virtues. Adherence to virtues is a cost for impulsive.

    The virtues compensate for the unfairness of biological differences.

    They drive down the cost of such subsidy and charity.

    But no. Instead the less able are due redistribution, obtained by force, due to the nature of their existence, rather than due to their actions.

    Societies will not bind on theft. All societies bind on exchange.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-17 13:58:00 UTC

  • ARE THERE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE TO FORCE INVOLUNTARY TRANSFERS? QUES

    ARE THERE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE TO FORCE INVOLUNTARY TRANSFERS?

    QUESTION: “True or false: there are cases in modern society – not referring to CEOs or the like – where some peoples’ voluntary decision(s) to pursue their own (non-violent) interests inadvertently harm other people in tangible ways. If yes, examples?” – Ashtad Bin Sayyif

    ANSWER: “There are many such opportunities. They fall into informal (moral and ethical) and formal ( property and opportunity) categories whereby one causes an involuntary transfer from others to one’s self. Society is constructed of these formal and informal rules. All of which prevent us from using asymmetry of information to cause involuntary transfers. From the most common retail clerk, to the most sophisticated legal document, from the most common of marital abuses, to the most formal partnership and citizenship agreements. Almost no human action is devoid of opportunity to cause involuntary transfers. It’s pervasive. We have the vast edifice of laws, morals, ethics and manners to attempt to prohibit them.” – Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-17 02:07:00 UTC

  • A Critique Of Jason Brennan’s Thought Experiment: Just War Is A Utilitarian And Contractual, Not Absolute Moral Concept

    Some Thought Experiments Involving Assassination by JASON BRENNAN 1. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this one innocent person.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that innocent person? 2. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill this Mafia don, a criminal who has himself killed many people and who plans to kill many more.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill that Mafia don? 3. Suppose an evil demon appears before you and says, “I plan to kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s architecture unless you kill the president.” Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 4. Suppose the evil demon possesses the president. The evil demon, in the guise of the president, plans to invade a foreign country. Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the demon-possessed president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president? 5. Suppose there is no evil demon. However, suppose the president, though not possessed by an evil demon, acts just like the possessed president in 4. The president appears before you and says, “I plan to invade a foreign country.” Suppose you know that the invasion is unjust–it clearly violates the correct theory of just war. Suppose you also know that the war will kill hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians and destroy their country’s infrastructure. Suppose killing the president will stop, or at least has a good chance of stopping, the invasion. Under these extreme circumstances, might it be permissible for you to kill the president?

    Jason, 1) Humans war. They always have and always will. It is impossible to resolve all conflicts by peaceful means. 2) The demon and the president are participants in a war. 3) As participants in the war they are outside daily civil legal and moral prohibitions we have constructed for peaceful interactions: our prohibition on violence does not apply. War revokes the prohibition on non violence. That is the purpose and point of demarcation of ‘war’. 4) Moral rules are general rules. They are a shortcut that allows us to propagate contractual terms which help us reduce our error in calculating property transfers when they are beyond our perception and knowledge. Moral rules are not abstract truths. The confusion is created by the priority one gives to the genetic structural categories of family, tribe, and nation, versus the egalitarian structure limited to the categories of the individual and humanity. Much religious content seeks to extend the familial category to the universal as a means of creating an opposition to the state. And approaching questions of property as questions of morality is an artifact of applying religious techniques that seek to simplify complexity into emotionally accessible social rules, to what are practical contractual constructs the articulation of which is too complicated for general use. 5) There is is no longer a genetic composition to war – the need to fight other tribes for genes to persist – which necessitates one’s participation in tribal war. Wars are now, and have been for a long time, conducted for economic interests, even if those economic interests apply only to the costly norms, status signals, property rights portfolios, and political systems that vary between groups. Therefore the individual is free to choose sides. 6) As free to choose sides, one may calculate his interests and those interests of those with whom he shares interests, and determine if he is benefitting or harming those with whom he shares interests. And if it is in his interest and the interest of those with whom he shares interest, then he may act to kill the demon/president/minister/general or not at his will. Propertarianism is correct: all human ethical and political statements can be reduced to property rights, and done so without contrivance. That is because all morals and all human moral feelings, are expressons of property rights when property rights are articulated such that they fully encompass the entirety of those things which humans treat as property. It is hard to do this topic justice in short form. But hopefully this is enough of a sketch to illustrate the problems of both moral parlor games, and treating war as other than a utilitarian construct. So the thought experiment misleads the reader with false premises. a) Argued on abstract and loaded absolute moral grounds, not articulated contractual grounds, in order to mislead the reader. b) Moral statements are general contractual rules for peaceful mutual exchange. c) And war by definition is outside of that contractual environment. d) ‘Just War’ is not an abstract moral truth but a contratual proposition between parties who seek to limit their own costs (See Kagan). So, the thought device is dependent upon the error of the common parlor game, in which one which poses false dichotomies in order to confuse the participants into thinking (like the train-lever parable) that morals are absolute rules foiled by specific extremes, rather than that morals are general statements of property rights loaded with emotional content so that they propagate more easily. The error here is confusing a statement of abstract and absolute truth, with one of utilitarian contract. The first is the meme. The second is a fact. Sometimes we must take risks. Otherwise, we risk also confusing convenience with conviction.

  • How Corrupt Is The U.s. Government?

    Government by it’s nature, because it is a monopoly, and concentrates capital, draws corruption.  In the USA, corruption tends to be systemic rather than individual. Meaning that the system encourages politicians to work for special interests, and government workers to collect extraordinary benefits – on avearage have retirement benefits equivalent to something like 750K in savings, compared to 50K for the average citizen — plus they cannot be fired and unlike the rest of us are insulated from market pressures.  Monetary corruption, meaning, the privatization of public funds or goods, in exchange for favors, is actually amazingly rare in the USA.  Almost all of it is systemic.

    Americans are somewhat unique in their belief that it is possible to construct virtuous politicians and insert them into a system that encourages systemic corruption. We attempt to change the human to fit the system, rather than change the system to fit human nature.

    https://www.quora.com/How-corrupt-is-the-U-S-Government

  • How Corrupt Is The U.s. Government?

    Government by it’s nature, because it is a monopoly, and concentrates capital, draws corruption.  In the USA, corruption tends to be systemic rather than individual. Meaning that the system encourages politicians to work for special interests, and government workers to collect extraordinary benefits – on avearage have retirement benefits equivalent to something like 750K in savings, compared to 50K for the average citizen — plus they cannot be fired and unlike the rest of us are insulated from market pressures.  Monetary corruption, meaning, the privatization of public funds or goods, in exchange for favors, is actually amazingly rare in the USA.  Almost all of it is systemic.

    Americans are somewhat unique in their belief that it is possible to construct virtuous politicians and insert them into a system that encourages systemic corruption. We attempt to change the human to fit the system, rather than change the system to fit human nature.

    https://www.quora.com/How-corrupt-is-the-U-S-Government

  • WE GRANT OUR VIOLENCE TO THE STATE IN EXCHANGE FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS And should th

    WE GRANT OUR VIOLENCE TO THE STATE IN EXCHANGE FOR PROPERTY RIGHTS

    And should the state no longer preserve those rights, we may deem the contract broken, and put our violence to other uses that will obtain us those rights.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 15:17:00 UTC

  • What Is The Justification For Political Authority Enforced By Force?

    I’m going to try to clarify the “Monopoly Of Violence” argument in Propertarian terms:

    All human existence can be reduced to property rights.
    • 0. All human beings object to involuntary transfer of what they worked to obtain, by theft, fraud, or violence, and whether that transfer be direct or indirect.
    • 1. All societies have collections of property rights.
    • 2. These rights exist along a spectrum that consists of individual, shareholder, and collective property rights.
    • 3. Those property rights can be constructive, neutral or destructive. They can be just or unjust. They can be dominated by egalitarianism, expropriation, or meritocracy or a combination thereof.
    • 4. Those rights are met with corresponding obligations we call norms: forgone opportunities, manners, ethics, morals. They are, in large part, prohibitions on involuntary transfers of property.
    • 5. And these obligations are costs. They are the cost of the institution of property. People feel that they ‘own’ their institutions because they ‘pay’ for them.
    • 6. Since any foreign group’s portfolio, upon interaction with the home group’s portfolio, will by definition and necessity cause involuntary transfers from any home group, and the inverse, then groups use violence to both to institute their property rights and obligations and to prevent involuntary transfers both inside and outside of the group.

    Groups have different property rights. Even among libertarians, we disagree upon warranty, symmetry, external costs and the right of exclusion. All groups, regardless of their portfolio, pay for property rights with forgone opportunities for violence, theft, and fraud. And the promise of violence remains whenever violence, theft, and fraud are committed.

    Therefore, people are ‘justified’ in protecting their property. Their property rights themselves are a form of property. They are justified in forming a group that mandates those property rights. They are justified in combating a government that abridges or abrogates those rights.

    You can run on with this reasoning and answer almost all political questions. However, to answer yours, directly, we need to understand that one does not ‘justify’ power. One exercises it to achieve one’s preferences, and either has the power to achieve them or not. Justification is an attempt to achieve one’s preferences at a lower cost, or to lower the cost of maintaining those preferences. But that is all.

    So your question implies a universalism that is not present in political action.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-justification-for-political-authority-enforced-by-force

  • Stiglitz Joins In On Keynesian Spending In Order To Expand The Oppressive State

    Stiglitz Joins In On Keynesian Spending In Order To Expand The Oppressive State http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/06/12/stiglitz-joins-in-on-keynesian-spending-in-order-to-expand-the-oppressive-state/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-20 14:13:19 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/215447238376292354

  • What Are The Best Examples Of “magical Libertarian Thinking About Markets”?

    I am not sure that there is anything magical.  I think that libertarians prefer to pay one set of consequences, and statists to pay different consequences.  A libertarian is perfectly OK with it taking ten years to solve a problem. A statist isn’t. A libertarian would rather have to battle an irresponsible corporation using the market than an irresponsible government that is outside the market. And in the end, that’s really the only difference.  

    I have been debating these topics for a long time and I am pretty sure that it all boils down to that distinction.  The libertarians are right that the state creates monopolies, and that most of the problems we face are the product of government, and that the government exacerbates those problems. The left is right in that the market works slowly and that there are consequences to relying upon it exclusively.  Some people seek to define the best balance of market and state. Others seek the extremes.

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-examples-of-magical-libertarian-thinking-about-markets