Curt Doolittle

Theme: Coercion

  • Propertarian Analysis of Reductio Libertarianism

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2733A Propertarian Analysis of Reductio Libertarianism.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-05-23 11:53:00 UTC

  • Reductio Libertarianism As An Effort To Export Costs (ie: Theft)

    In yet another debate with crooks masquerading as libertarians. I ask “Define Moral.” Bob replies “Moral = “Absence of coercion. Immoral = Presence of coercion (force or fraud).” Then he teases me a bit for my usually turgid analytical analysis: “What’s your definition, Curt? We assume it’s gotta be a pretty complex definition or it’s not particularly impressive, correct?” To which I reply: “Yes, you have the correct definition for interpersonal relations. However, the same method of analysis applies to shareholder relations. The problem lies in the process of decision making for transfers of assets, which are determined by the shareholder agreement. ie: “constitution”, whether discreet and written, or traditional and structured, or traditional and unstructured. Moral crimes include crimes against shareholder assets. ie: transfers that are possible because of increasing degrees of ignorance, and therefore without interpersonal coercion. Such transfers are not only possible, but easy and invisible, by the act of transferring opportunity costs: “For example, imagine an island where having a child that you cannot support, and therefore must rely upon charity to feed, is an immoral crime. It is a forcible transfer of wealth, because the shareholder agreement forbids allowing a person or child to starve — and therefore the parent, by having a child, forced other shareholders to pay for the support of that child, otherwise the other shareholders would break the agreement themselves. This is an involuntary transfer. Humans organize. Organizations consist of shareholders. Shareholders have responsibilities to avoid transfers. Any Propertarian analysis must include shareholder agreements and shareholder properties, because people do in fact create and live by those shareholder methods and processes. To ignore such organizations is unscientific. Or, worse, an immoral attempt to privatize opportunities, or externalize costs onto others. 🙂 “So I would state it like this (or as a graph):


    2. There are three forms of coercion:
        1) Violence against a person or property,
        2) Fraud,
        3) Opportunity Deprivation (ie:Ostracization or non-cooperation: deprivation of opportunity) We call this ‘moral’ coercion.

    3. There is only one form of ‘manipulation’ of another person’s actions, which is both voluntary and symmetrical ((I use the term ‘symmetrical’ where most would use ‘equitable’, only because I am somewhat concerned about the loaded content of the word ‘equitable’ which is both imprecise and emotionally loaded for my purposes . )), and that is voluntary Trade (Exchange).

    4. People join organizations in order to increase their opportunities, and decrease their costs of opportunities.

    5. Membership in organizations requires Individuals pay direct costs, such as actions and payments, as well as indirect costs, such as forgoing opportunities for gratification, or choosing a less gratifying alternative in order to adhere to specific moral coercions, because it is these moral self-deprivations that forbid the privatization of other people’s forgone opportunity costs.

    6. People join multiple organizations. They do so by paying the direct costs and opportunity costs prescribed in the ‘shareholder agreement’.

    7. Some organizational requirements conflict with other organizational requirements, therefore people ‘cheat’ on their membership costs in order to obtain additional opportunities at a discount

    8. Therefore Interpersonal Moral Action = Absence of coercion.” But since people join organizations in order to increase their opportunities, and decrease their costs of opportunities, this is an insufficient definition for all exchanges.

    9. Therefore Shareholder Moral Action = Absence of Coercion + Absence of Externalization of Costs + Absence of Privatization of Opportunities. This is a sufficient definition for environments where organizations are present.

    10. All moral human actions consist of one or more actions, using zero or more objects, and zero or more interpersonal exchanges, which occur under zero to many shareholder agreements, where the individual does not use any of the three forms of coercion, and does not externalize costs onto other shareholders, or privatize opportunities unto one’s self, or transfer opportunities to others.

    1. The institution of property itself is a form of coercion. Of sacrificing opportunity costs according to a social contract. Therefore we cannot have property to transfer without the costs paid for self deprivation of opportunity – that’s without even considering the necessity for collective defense.
    2. Narrowly Defining morality only as Interpersonal Moral actions is an attempt at appropriation, that is THEFT, by FRAUDULENT MEANS of the vast opportunity costs paid by all members of an organization, both past and present.
    3. Non-conformity is a form of either expensive research programs, or theft, or forcible redistribution — depending upon whether the objective is to increase production (moral), or to conduct a transfer (immoral)
    4. Humans conduct conflicts between their different organizations using these opportunity cost differences embodied in their different social contracts, to which we apply the terms “culture”. Wars can be conducted by direct violence, or economic competition, or by thefts of cultural opportunity costs. This is why religious cults, and class wars, and immigration can succeed in obtaining power. They steal opportunity costs.

    “Is that OK? Because it’s right you know….. :)”

  • “No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.” — Finally. Dead. By Navy S

    “No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.” — Finally. Dead. By Navy Seals.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-05-02 06:16:00 UTC

  • Translating Complaints About Private Sector Services

    When people disparage the private sector and seek services from the government what they really mean is one or more of the following: 1) DISCOUNT ON RESEARCH / RISK REDUCTION: “I am not able to judge the services in the marketplace, and unable to determine which of the inexpensive choices at my disposal in the market is optimum, and therefore I wish to circumvent the market in exchange for having the same services available to all.” – ie: the ‘roads and sidewalks’ analogy wherein, “I have a right to use the same common goods as everyone else.” 2) PROFIT REDISTRIBUTION: “I am not a desirable customer by any company and therefore, I wish to circumvent the market in order to obtain services that are greater in value than what I produce for exchange in the market by servicing others.” – The redistributive strategy. (To some degree this is a legitimate concern, since there will always be some that it is not worth the effort to serve other than by charity.) The basic idea is that if one conforms to social norms, and pays the high cost of respecting property, that one should get some return on one’s investment. 3) STATUS REDISTRIBUTION: “For any company to whom I am a desirable customer, I will be given services in a manner, and of a quality, that is less than I desire, or which is substandard to my self perceived social status.” (This is redistribution of social status is as important to many on the bottom half, as is monetary redistribution – and to some, more important.) It is particularly important for the lower two quintiles. It is this perception of status redistribution that creates ‘enfranchisement’ in the social order. Or rather, it is participation in the middle class, as a consumer, that people desire in order to consider themselves a ‘citizen’ who supports the social order. 4) ENCOURAGE GOVERNMENT COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SERVICES: “I can more successfully petition the government for redress than I can a company, because I am a more valuable customer to the government than I am to any private company.” (There is increasingly truthful content to this perception – an argument which is beyond addressing here, but which is the increasing performance of public market, and public-credit companies, acting as bureaucracies because they can afford to rely on credit and prices rather than care of customers. Again, this is difficult, but there are in fact, ‘evil corporations’. It’s just that the government cannot change it by regulation of business performance.) Note that in listing these choices, I am relying on an assumption that differences in human ABILITY. I have not included the options that simply result from laziness. Laziness as a reason to circumvent the market is not redistribution. It is a form of fraud. (Although this is a longer argument.) If someone posits an argument that the government would better serve them, you can easily control the conversation by making the discourse about their individual preferences, and keep asking questions until you identify wich of these four positions, strategies or meanings, the person is relying upon in their arguments.

  • No Whoopie, It’s Not About Race.

    Over on Real Clear Politics, Whoopie Goldberg says she’s Playing The Race Card. To which I reply: It’s not about race. It’s about the welfare state’s collectivism vs classical liberalism’s individualism. Three Rules of Politics:

    • RULE 1: “People will not tolerate rulership by someone who despises them and their values.”
    • RULE 2:“People will not tolerate taxation when the proceeds are used for purposes with which they disagree.”
    • RULE 3: “Everyone reverts to group persistence under duress. EVERYONE. So people have racial, cultural, class, and genration biases. They are biased for their group under duress, and egalitarian under prosperity. This is basic behavioral economics. There is no data, anywhere, that supports an alternative view.

    If someone despises you, and uses your taxes for purposes that you disagree with, and you’re under economic duress, then that’s all that’s required to understanding their political position. People despised, and continue to despise Jimmy Carter for the same reasons as they do Obama. FACT 1: Whites pay the vast majority of taxes. While the government does everything it can to obscure the fact that taxes are primarily a white burden, the fact remains, that taxes are almost entirely a white burden. This violates Rule 2 above. And under economic duress it invokes Rule 3 above. If anything is racially loaded, it’s that whites are unique in the world, and in world history, in preferring classical liberalism’s individual freedom and responsibility over the alternatives offered by other, less successful cultures. If race is involved, it’s because Obama demonstrably disdains white people. I didn’t use the word ‘hate’. That’s a loaded word for silly people. But, why else would he call a meeting with a board of six like minded economic advisors this spring without a single white person among them? If race was involved why would whites try to draft Colin Powell, and why would whites be such avid supporters of black conservatives? So, it’s not about race. It’s about being anti-American. American being defined as a class of rights that white, anglo-germanic people invented, and codified in a constitution, and who have consistently extended those rights to other peoples. And have fought wars to extend to other peoples. And born sacrifices to carry to other peoples. So if you want to make it about race, and we actually get the data out during the election cycle, it will have quite the opposite effect that advocates of ‘playing the race card’ will intend. That’s because white people are beginning to act like the minority that they are becoming. And in that process, they have, and will continue to cease feeling guilt over slavery, or their dominance over the expansion of the institutions of prosperity that we call capitalism, and will increasingly act as does the Jewish lobby: in self interest. And for African Americans, if whites lose their guilt and become a minority, and act as diasporic capitalists like the Jews, how is the rest of the world going to treat Africans and African Americans? Playing the race card is a losing proposition. So lets just stick with having the argument over the welfare state and collectivism versus classical liberalism and individualism.

  • Anarcho Capitalism Is As Logically Ridiculous As Marx’s Communism – But Both Have Something To Teach Us

    Marxist doctrine states that steps are required to create the utopian communist society. The eventual result of marxism’s destruction of the system of property was for the purpose of creating an anarchic society where everyone had what they wanted, and wanted nothing more – the fixed-pie fantasy. The state was only necessary as a first step in order to make it possible to get to that utopia. Socialism was simply the first step in reaching the marxian utopian dream of the non-propertarian, anarchic, left libertarian society. Socialism means ‘state ownership of the means of production’. Communism means that there is no property whatsoever or the need for it. Communism was the next evolutionary step after Socialism. People tend to treat communism and socialism as synonyms but they are not. They are a sequential strategy for achieving the marxist utopian society.

    [callout]Once you understand how ridiculously impossible communism is, you can also understand how ridiculously impossible anarcho capitalist libertarianism is.[/callout]

    Once you understand how ridiculously impossible communism is, you can also understand how ridiculously impossible anarcho capitalist libertarianism is. Socialism is impossible because of the problem of knowledge (distributed and fragmentary), prices (provide the information system), and incentives (encourage people to produce). Communism is impossible because humans never cease to want new stimulation and because we are unequal, and our reproductive strategy insures rotation such that we shall never be equal. So effectively, communism is impossible because populations need property in order to produce prosperity. Anarcho capitalism is impossible because of the problem of creating and maintaining complex forms of property. Men will no more stop seeking better mates and more stimuli, than they will stop seeking to benefit by fraud theft and violence. We need political institutions to channel men’s actions into market activity rather than hedonism or predation. We need very few of those institutions. and the fewer the better. But we need them. If you think communism is impossible, then logically anarcho capitalism is impossible. They both depend on a belief in the nature of man that is counter to self-reflection, observation and history.

  • rights are indeed the basis for prosperity. However, property rights are an inst

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2439Property rights are indeed the basis for prosperity. However, property rights are an institution that is created by the application of organized institutional violence. This fact is usually lost of ideological libertarians.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-03-28 14:25:00 UTC

  • NPR Is The 700 Club For The Church Of Democratic Secular Humanism

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of NPR. I’m a listener, albiet not a frequent one. On the other hand, using taxpayer money for purposes that are political in nature, content, or value judgements which other taxpayers find patently offensive is simply intolerable. We will not have a government that we can all support unless it does very little, and what little it does, is acceptable to everyone. NPR appeals to people who are educated but who largely do not participate in the market, or are wealthy enough not to need to participate in the market. It is an 11% demographic, and that 11% is decidedly left of center, because our universities are decidedly left of center. And for that reason, the use of public funds to promote the religion of secular humanism is simply offensive to other people. NPR is The 700 Club for Democratic Secular Humanism. It belongs in the private sector.

    NPR Board Member Admits It Serves ‘Liberal, Highly Educated Elite,’ Wonders How to Justify Public Funding http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan-markay/2011/03/11/npr-board-member-admits-it-serves-liberal-highly-educated-elite-wond

    • Violence and Virtue vs Morality and Fraud

      My rights are protected by my willingess to kill in order to defend them. Legal documents either require that many people are willing to kill to defend them, or that many people are willing to kill to enforce them, or that many people are wiling to kill to change them. Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deceptlon by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do. Instead, government is a shareholder system whereby we each obtain the productive efficiency of scale in enforcing our defense of established rights, and therefore obtain them at a discount. But the government has that power only because we relinquish it to them. And we do not pay those costs equally. Some of us have a greater virtue of violence at our disposal than others. We are initially wealthier in violence than other people, so the cost of our privileges is higher. While those who are weaker, obtain a higher benefit than do the stronger. This is looking at the mythology from the opposite perspective. Since in all of history, the minority who has the greatest capacity for violence has established all political orders.

      [callout]Moral arguments by contrast are a form of deception by which the weak attempt to gain advantages without paying the costs for obtaining those advantages. That is the sole purpose of moral argument. By contrast, any right that is possessed by virtue of social contracts, formal or not, is possessed only because of the willingness of people to use violence in order to protect it. The government does not protect my rights. I do.[/callout]

      The west was built diffrently from the east or middle east, because it was built by a fraternity of warriors. Even with our vast specialization of careers, it is still protected by vi olence. Violence is a virtue. The fact that women are poorer in violence, and that the poor and ignorant are less able to pay the sacrifice nand discipline eeded to use it, is why they rely on moral arguments. THE PROXY FOR VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL CLASS There is no argument among philosophers, and certainly among political economists, that the system of property rights and exchange, regardless of culture, is a proxy for violence. By monopolizing violence, ‘governments’ force people to compete by production rather than violence. This provides people wiht incentives to produce. Production vastly favors discipline. Wealth vastly favors IQ. Productivity has the negative emotional consequence of amplifying the differences between individuals, and rewarding individuals more diversely than under tribal society, and therefore subjects the proletariat to more negative status signals, and making a social class out of the proletariat because of it, that our tribal sentiments and cognitive biases support. THE ECONOMICS OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Moral statements depend on economic circumstances. In pre-agrarian society, murder, plunder and rape are heroic, not prohibited activities. In post-industrial society, some sort of redistribution is at least suggested by human sentiments. “rights” are a MORAL not NECESSARY argument. Rights are POSSIBLE only when there is very limited SCARCITY. Legal RIGHTS are only POSSIBLE when a minority is willing to exercise violence to protect them. We ACKNOWLEDGE the POSSIBILITY of certain rights only because we can AFFORD them at some period in time. There are vast differences between social classes on what ‘rights’ we can afford at one period in time or another. The lower social classes argue for rights. The upper social classes argue for utilities. The lower classes breed. The upper classes don’t. The lower classes envy the productive classes, the upper classes protect their assets. Property, civilization, society, in ALL CASES WITHOUT EXCEPTION were created by the application of violence by a minority Ideas held in ignorance are just evidence of ignorance, and nothing more. Moral arguments are irrational arguments because they do not enumerate their properties. Economic arguments are NECESSARY arguments, not the display of PREFERENCES nor MORAL arguments. The lower classes use resistance movements rather than actions to work against stronger forces. Resistance movements are ‘costs’. They are opportunity costs. They create economic friction. They create cooperative friction. Resistance increases the costs for the middle class, and can overwhelm the ability to export violence by the upper classes. Moral statements on rights made under the threat of the application of either resistance, political violence, or street violence. “MIGHT MAKES RIGHTS” “Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.”

      [callout]”Might may not make right. But might certainly makes all Rights.[/callout]

      Hence, my correct statement that my rights consist of my willingness (along with others) to use violence to protect my rights. THE FRAUD OF MORAL ARGUMENTS Violence is a virtue. It is the first virtue. And those who argue otherwise do so out of either ignorance or fraud. Because it is fraud to make a moral argument rather than a necessary and economically necessary argument. Moral arguments are, without exception, arguments made from either ignorance or deception. In most cases they are made from deception, in order to obtain transfer payments in order to accumulate resources at a discount. IN effect most if not all proletariat arguments for transfer payments are threats of organized violence against others. You are welcome to debate this topic with me but I am fairly sure I will prevail. Because unlike you I am not arguing from a network of silly moral deceptions. In moral arguments “follow the money” is a more valuable technique than it is in forensic investigation. Because the world is very clearly separated into people who produce and those who form resistance movements in order to obtain the productive results of others by the reliance on moral arguments the implication of which is violence if their wants for transfer payments are not met. The only good and bad is whether the transfer payments requested by the proletariat threat of violence is Pareto Efficient or not. ie: whether more harm to the economy is done by the transfers (redistribution) than by failing to do so, and over what period of time that harm is created. There is no harm in creating roads because roads increase productivity which is for the good of all. But all redistribution to individuals that is for personal consumption has significant negative consequences. While there is some benefit to Poor Farm’s and Social security, as long as it is a very minimal cost. Creating a dependent class of people by failing to force them to save, is creating an economic hazard. No matter what transfer we talk about the society is exposed to risk by the creation of supposedly risk abating transfer payments. It is very simple really.

    • Response To Posner On Guns

      (Note: I posted this as a comment on http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ and am copying it here, as a I always do.) Guns are for more than hunting and self defense. They’re also a political symbol, and a political institution. Arms have uses. But the purpose of arms is to maintain the ability to overthrow an oppressive government, and to insure that members of a government take no actions that would sufficiently anger even a small percentage of the people, such that they might raise their arms and use them. Yes guns are cool. Yes they are a status symbol. Yes guns provide one with a sense of security. And yes, they are the material tools by which a people remain free. Even if remaining free is the sentiment of the minority of the population. One is not free if he must rely for his security upon the willingness of others. He is free because he chooses to preserve the existing social order, despite the fact that he has the physical power at his disposal to alter it if necessary.

      [callout]There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. [/callout]

      Violence is a virtue: The more of it you have, the more free you are. The more free you make others by possessing it, but using it only to preserve that freedom. Restraint is the most powerful use of violence. If you no longer possess it, you cannot restrain it. It is most powerful if it is a potential. Actions which are not taken are often not measurable. Economists know this. It is the problem of the broken window fallacy, and the principle behind Opportunity Costs. As such, economists should be wary of applying infinite discounts to a property of human behavior, simply because of the difficulty of measuring the cost of that behavior. Property is an institution that is created by the threat of violence. The use of violence to create property, whether it be the several property of the individual or the shareholder property of the collective, is the most massive and constant application of violence that civilizations apply, from the very broadest group, down to each individual. Property is the highest cost institution. It is the hardest to develop. The Iron Law of Oligarchy and it’s manifestation in bureaucracies guarantees that all governments, of all forms, will be corrupt, and self serving. The only counter to the bureaucracy of the state is the promise of violence by it’s citizens. Under republican democracy and social democracy, the bureaucracy is demonstrably more self-serving than under other forms of government, and far less subject to democratic change. Tyrants can be killed. Bureaucracies cannot be. The vast efforts of the West for the past few centuries have been to create the institutions of property elsewhere. And our primary advances in human productivity and cooperation have been the result of the tools to account for, the legal systems to administer, the education to teach children how to use, and the new types of money and credit instruments, finance, banking, capital and markets to facilitate, the ordered use of property. And we have spread those instituions of property, almost always by the force of arms. This has occurred despite movement after movement by one class or another, from the base proletariat to the elitist public intellectual, to deprive us of that violence, so that they may use the violence of the state to remove from us our freedom, and to alter our definitions of property, and therefore appropriate the institutions, the property, or the results of our labors for the benefit of one group or another. Adherence to property definitions, and use of the tools and institutions to manipulate property, are the foundation of learning in every culture. The Justice that is used to resolve conflicts, and the government that is used to create and regulate markets, both sit upon the technology of violence. And governments, if they are over free men, are created and maintained by the fraternity of individuals who are wiling to forgo the institution of violence in order to preserve their definitions of property, their systems of justice, and their institutions of government. Guns, more than any type of arms in history, equalize our capacity for violence. They make us equal in age, health, strength and choice. Each of us possesses violence. It is a natural human potential. The more skilled we are, the more armed we are, the more we possess of it. The greater the store of it, the wealthier are our people. The more secure are our trade routes. The more respectful are our governors. The more free are our citizens. The more prosperous our people. The more choices for happiness are open to each of us. History does not favor the weak — whether as a nation, or as individuals. In the west, our social order, our history, derives from our unique development of cities, which was accomplished through the cooperation of a fraternity of warriors. We should understand that cities are synonymous with markets. Warriors built markets with the threat of violence, and it was done at high cost. Our trade system today is one of high cost. And common americans benefit from that high cost. Even if we are exporting debt and currency to pay for our military system, rather than simply taxing everyone else for our world trade routes. Our fraternity is what makes us unique among other civilizations. Its origin is in our weakness against the stronger, wealthier and more populous east. With smaller numbers, and better technology, our shareholders defended their markets against superior forces. And while in our lifetimes we have been majority for a brief flicker in time. We are a minority again. A minority who protects our markets, our trade, and our institutions and our freedom with a wealth of violence. By our actions-not-taken. Against the constant drum of talkers and scribblers who would take from us our violence and deprive us of our freedom. Today we use the word ‘shareholder’ instead of ‘citizen’ for our voluntary orders. We do so to obfuscate the cost of being a shareholder or a citizen. So that many people may become shareholders without first paying the cost of obtaining one’s share. By respecting the institutions of property, we gain admission to the market. To respect property is to refrain from violence and fraud. There are only three tools by which humans can coerce other human beings: violence, words and payment. Each social class has developed elites that master one of the three tools. And any attempt to deprive us of words, arms or property, is simply an attempt by the elites of one class to deprive members of another class of their political power, and to obtain additional power for their own at a discount. I hope that the meaning of that statement is not too subtle to be clear. Curt Doolittle