Curt Doolittle

Theme: Constitutional Order

  • THE “RUSE” OF MORAL PRINCIPLES LIBERTY CAN ONLY EXISTS UNDER RULE OF LAW, AND TH

    THE “RUSE” OF MORAL PRINCIPLES

    LIBERTY CAN ONLY EXISTS UNDER RULE OF LAW, AND THEREFORE ONLY UNDER EXPRESSION OF GENERAL RULES EXPRESSED AS LAW.

    The only question is the scope of permissible law: the range of property humans intuit to aspire to acquire, that the community agrees to organize and apply violence to defend. And that which we are willing to defend depends entirely upon the marginal indifference of our political needs. Which is why diverse polities have lower trust and higher demand for more authoritarian intervention, and more homogenous polities have higher trust and less demand for authoritarian interventions.

    So no, despite the attempted distraction via overloading and framing of libertines, a ‘moral principle’ is just a deceptive argument, and a ‘guiding principle’ is just a ruse – a justification for not solving the very hard problem: of that which we consider to be property by our actions, and that which we are willing to enforce with our actions.

    Everything else is just an elaborate deception or convenient justification. In the cast of libertines, it’s an excuse to intentionally conflate libertinism with libertarianism. And worse, it’s an attempt to forbid the law from use as a means of retaliating against free riding, imposed costs, and involuntary transfers (all synonyms), each of which makes cooperation irrational.

    So the purpose of libertinism is to use a moral principle as a ruse to define a limit to the law, that specifically licenses free riding, imposed costs, and involuntary transfers – the labels we use for these thefts include unethical, immoral, and conspiratorial actions – by prohibiting both physical and legal retaliation for them.

    Worse, since the western competitive advantage is our ability to construct commons free of privatization, including the commons of property rights themselves, libertinism is an well designed attack on our ability to produce commons, and therefore our reproductive and competitive evolutionary strategy. Libertinism is as genocidal for the west as is the Cathedral’s democratic secular socialist humanism’s universalism.

    And I use the term “justification” as a synonym for self-deception – and yes, it is possible for our genes intuitions to deceive our consciousness through overloading. Just as it is possible for others to deceive us through loading, framing then overloading. That is why religions work in the construction belief despite overwhelming experiential evidence. Unconscious selection bias exists and is testable. Suggestion exists and is testable. There is no reason why evolution would favor a superiority of reason over intuition. That would a losing proposition.

    The only question is, what scope of suppression of involuntary transfers (imposed costs/free riding) is necessary for liberty to be rationally preferable over a state that imposed universal rules? The answer is to the rational question is found in transaction costs. At what point are local transaction costs sufficiently suppressed that the remote explicit costs of a state are no longer preferable?

    The moral ruse has harmed the course of liberty. Thankfully, the question, reframed as transaction costs, and rational choice, necessary to eliminate demand for the state, can restore the course of liberty.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-07 06:55:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY EXISTS ONLY UNDER RULE OF LAW AND THEREFORE ONLY UNDER EXPRESSION OF GEN

    LIBERTY EXISTS ONLY UNDER RULE OF LAW AND THEREFORE ONLY UNDER EXPRESSION OF GENERAL RULES IN LAW.

    As far as I know liberty can only be constructed under rule of law. The only question is the scope of permissible law: the range of property humans intuit to aspire to acquire, that the community agrees to organize and apply violence to defend.

    So no, a ‘moral principle’ is just a deceptive argument, and a ‘guiding principle’ is just a ruse – a justification for not solving the very hard problem: of that which we consider to be property by our actions, and that which we are willing to enforce with our actions.

    Everything else is just an elaborate deception or convenient justification.

    (And I use the term justification as a synonym for self deception)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-05 10:54:00 UTC

  • NO, MR. LIBERTINE, YOUR OPINION IS IRRELEVANT. 🙂 Your opinion as to whether you

    NO, MR. LIBERTINE, YOUR OPINION IS IRRELEVANT. 🙂

    Your opinion as to whether your a libertarian or a libertine is immaterial. Either you’re a libertarian and the law must suppress all free riding in both public and private spheres; or you are an advocate for the most extensive free riding that is possible without the application of violence – by forbidding the use of violence in retaliation for free riding.

    So you’re a libertarian under rule of law, or a libertine to escape rule of law.

    Your opinion is not material – only your choice of the scope of property to be protected from parasitism.

    It’s that simple.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-05 10:09:00 UTC

  • ANGLO WORLD: THE SPORT OF CONFLICT In the anglo world, our law evolved such that

    ANGLO WORLD: THE SPORT OF CONFLICT

    In the anglo world, our law evolved such that the judge was a trusted referee for combatants, not an authority. The judge is a referee, the two sides enter combat and the jury (the audience) determines who has won or lost. The common law had then to be understandable by common jurors, since they determine the outcome -they ‘judge’. The ‘judge’ himself or herself, is merely a referee to ensures that the rules of the game are obeyed.

    Why does the jury system work in the anglo-sphere and why is it either feared or unworkable in others? And what can we learn from that?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-03 05:03:00 UTC

  • “What a stark contrast to the realities of our present, co-opted, american syste

    —“What a stark contrast to the realities of our present, co-opted, american system, wherein “redress of grievance,” by the body of people is rejected as “not having standing,” and where the judiciary remains unconvinced (biased) that harm has been imposed upon an individual – when in actuality, injury by (previous) government action was imposed upon all.”— William L. Benge

    (edited for clarity)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-02 18:21:00 UTC

  • IF MORALITY IS UNIVERSAL, THEN SO IS LAW. Given that there is only one law – the

    IF MORALITY IS UNIVERSAL, THEN SO IS LAW.

    Given that there is only one law – the prevention of free riding; and one means of suppressing it – the law. And that humans demonstrate constant innovation to escape the limitations of competitors – market competition. And that humans demonstrate constant innovation in the means of escaping the limits of that law. And as such, preservation of that market, by that law, requires that we match innovation in the law, so that the difference between market innovation to escape competition, free riding to take advantage of new opportunities for free riding, and the legal means of suppressing free riding, preserve confidence in taking risks, and preserve the velocity of the market, and preserve the accumulation of wealth. Then the question remains why we would need competing legal systems any more than we would need competing systems of mathematics. If we separate judiciary from government, meaning that we separate the resolution of disputes and innovation in the law, from the production of commons via a contract, then we may need different governments for the different allocations of control over our individual property rights, in order to produce the commons that are desirable by our individual group members, but I can understand no conditions under which we require competing systems of law, other than to allow different ranges of morality in the creative application of free riding. We may require organic and distributed evolution of the law, much like we use in science today – moving from hypothesis on a law, to theory on a law, to ‘law’ proper by the accumulation of judicial consent. But if these laws diverge, then something is wrong. The reason being that all legal disputes are decidable, and if they are not then they are not matters of property open to decision making.

    As far as I know this is a box and the theory of a market for law is done.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-02 02:07:00 UTC

  • CITIZEN SHAREHOLDERS —“Service guarantees citizenship. – This is why I served

    CITIZEN SHAREHOLDERS

    —“Service guarantees citizenship. – This is why I served in the US military even though I wasn’t compelled to.”—David M.

    Thoughts:

    So, in our Corporations we have created forms of stock: including Controlling, Various Preferred, Common, Non-Voting, and Options. These different shares roughly reflect the different value that we bring to companies. Controlling is for management and founders, preferred for professional investors (board members), common for uninformed lenders (‘pseudo-investors’ via the stock market), and non-voting (options in the event of a sale) and options (bonuses) for employees.

    When we use the term ‘citizenship’ today it carries with it the current assumption that citizenship is at best equal to a common, non-voting, or option form of stock. When democratic indo europeans use that term, they mean it as a member that the corporation of the aristocracy or church has agreed to insure. In the pre-democratic era, Citizen refers to the heads of households, families or businesses, that have demonstrated investment in the corporation. In the greek era, that was less than 10% of the population (what we would consider the oligarchy (<1%) the nobility (1%), and the upper middle class (<10%)

    I don’t really agree with Mencius’ approach, but if you told me instead, that we voted for ‘motions’, (internal contracts between shareholders), that any voting shareholder could put forward a motion, that such motions were perishable (had to collect votes in a specific period of time), that all voting was conducted publicly, entirely transparently, and recorded in the public block chain; that each share granted an individual one vote, and that all individuals were prohibited from possession of more than one share, and that a majority or supermajority of **each** class of shares had approve any vote, then I think that is a successful means of running some sort of juridical democracy under nomocratic rule (rule of law). This does not eliminate public intellectuals, but it does eliminate politicians (agents). if public the normative and intellectual commons is as I have stated, property that the corporation agrees to defend, and all shareholders possess standing in suits concerning the commons, and that we require truthful speech in all matters of the commons, because we require warranty of products, services, and public speech, then public intellectuals can be independently regulated.

    Rather than classify individuals ‘as’ something or other, we can issue (and possibly limit) shares (block chain / public-ledger accounts). Shares can be earned (purchased) through demonstrated actions, but not purchased by any material exchange, not transferred, and not awarded, granted, given, for any other reason). If one has earned a higher status share, he must trade in any existing share to redeem the new one.

    Repeat felons for example, are effectively wards of the corporation, as are children, not shareholders. I suspect that the class of wards would be fairly large, the class of non voting shares – non-contributing people – fairly large, voting -contributing- fairly large, preferred services shares (care-taking), preferred production(professional, business, and industry), and preferred aristocracy (military, militia, law) fairly large. The most interesting problem is the judiciary, because the law has managed to create a secular ‘priesthood’ (cult) over time due to the very high investment costs in rituals, and to self- manage that cult. Which I find fascinating. And as long as one can preserve that cult via military service, indoctrination, truth-telling, and propertarian calculation, then I think it only requires a small number of people, all of whom have extraordinary interests in it, to preserve liberty.

    I will cover this idea in greater depth as we go along.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-24 15:24:00 UTC

  • Why Do Nepalese Maoists Want Ethnicity-based Federalism In Nepal’s New Constitution? Will Ethnicity-based Politics Do Any Good To Nepal In The Long Run?

    ETHNO-NATIONALISM
    Ethnically homogenous polities, and particularly SMALL ethnically homogenous polities demonstrate higher tolerance for high taxation and high redistribution because of our biological preference for kin selection.

    People often advocate the scandinavian model, but these are very small countries where all individuals are near-relations, where cousin-marriage is prohibited, and where the absolute nuclear family is practiced along with individual property rights meaning children are responsible for themselves and their economic survival, and do not stay home with parents.  They are also well educated, genetically lower in impulsivity, enjoy hard work, and speak in germanic languages in which duty and hierarchy are metaphysical givens.  As such these countries have very high cultural resistance to corruption.

    Given the great transformation that Nepalese must go through this coming century, a more homogenous culture means less competition for political power that is useful for seeking and distributing rents, and less opportunity and incentive for organized political corruption. 

    However, given traditional nepalese family structures, and nepalese poverty levels, it is unlikely (much like india) that corruption will be eliminated from government and it may even be expanded. 

    Conversely, it is less likely that the degree of corruption that the nepalese will engage in will cause political infighting or a resistance to taxation and redistribution (if only into investment in the commons: infrastructure), if the polity is homogenous. 

    THE DECLINING ADVANTAGE OF SCALE

    Scale is no longer as valuable to an economy as is a reliable currency. 

    It appears that the universalists program advocated by the enlightenment is unsuccessful and that nationalism (tribalism at scale), will return to its historical status as the dominant political ideology.

    This is in part because the value of scale in obtaining credit necessary to finance war has been nearly eliminated by the (strange) influence of nuclear weapons.  If a country can afford nuclear weapons it does not need to engage in large scale defense projects, because its boundaries are secure.  Conversely (as Mr Putin has demonstrated) a country without nuclear weapons cannot claim sovereignty.

    So just as credit, conscription, and ‘total war’ defined the past five hundred years, it appears that nuclear weapons, and small scale nationalism which better serves the interests of citizens, will replace empires and military-credit-industrialism.

    Hence, oddly enough, nuclear weapons end up having produced intuitive political orders.

    Strange but true.

    Cheers

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Nepalese-Maoists-want-ethnicity-based-federalism-in-Nepals-new-constitution-Will-ethnicity-based-politics-do-any-good-to-Nepal-in-the-long-run

  • Why Do Nepalese Maoists Want Ethnicity-based Federalism In Nepal’s New Constitution? Will Ethnicity-based Politics Do Any Good To Nepal In The Long Run?

    ETHNO-NATIONALISM
    Ethnically homogenous polities, and particularly SMALL ethnically homogenous polities demonstrate higher tolerance for high taxation and high redistribution because of our biological preference for kin selection.

    People often advocate the scandinavian model, but these are very small countries where all individuals are near-relations, where cousin-marriage is prohibited, and where the absolute nuclear family is practiced along with individual property rights meaning children are responsible for themselves and their economic survival, and do not stay home with parents.  They are also well educated, genetically lower in impulsivity, enjoy hard work, and speak in germanic languages in which duty and hierarchy are metaphysical givens.  As such these countries have very high cultural resistance to corruption.

    Given the great transformation that Nepalese must go through this coming century, a more homogenous culture means less competition for political power that is useful for seeking and distributing rents, and less opportunity and incentive for organized political corruption. 

    However, given traditional nepalese family structures, and nepalese poverty levels, it is unlikely (much like india) that corruption will be eliminated from government and it may even be expanded. 

    Conversely, it is less likely that the degree of corruption that the nepalese will engage in will cause political infighting or a resistance to taxation and redistribution (if only into investment in the commons: infrastructure), if the polity is homogenous. 

    THE DECLINING ADVANTAGE OF SCALE

    Scale is no longer as valuable to an economy as is a reliable currency. 

    It appears that the universalists program advocated by the enlightenment is unsuccessful and that nationalism (tribalism at scale), will return to its historical status as the dominant political ideology.

    This is in part because the value of scale in obtaining credit necessary to finance war has been nearly eliminated by the (strange) influence of nuclear weapons.  If a country can afford nuclear weapons it does not need to engage in large scale defense projects, because its boundaries are secure.  Conversely (as Mr Putin has demonstrated) a country without nuclear weapons cannot claim sovereignty.

    So just as credit, conscription, and ‘total war’ defined the past five hundred years, it appears that nuclear weapons, and small scale nationalism which better serves the interests of citizens, will replace empires and military-credit-industrialism.

    Hence, oddly enough, nuclear weapons end up having produced intuitive political orders.

    Strange but true.

    Cheers

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Nepalese-Maoists-want-ethnicity-based-federalism-in-Nepals-new-constitution-Will-ethnicity-based-politics-do-any-good-to-Nepal-in-the-long-run

  • DECLINE — ‘The theory of the divine right of kings as it came to prominence in

    DECLINE

    — ‘The theory of the divine right of kings as it came to prominence in the seventeenth century had no place in medieval thought. Because of the mutuality of the relationship between ruler and people, should the ruler fail in his obligation—and his primary obligation was to rule under the law—then the bargain or compact was broken and the people released from their obligations to obey.’ — Andy Curzon

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-20 09:43:00 UTC