Curt Doolittle

Theme: Constitutional Order

  • Is Private Property More Natural Than Government? Why Or Why Not? And What Are The Policy Implications?

    AN INTERESTING QUESTION – THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST TO ANSWER IT.  I’ll try to give you the best answer currently available.

    “We have laws because we have property, we do not have property because we have laws” – Frederic Bastiat.

    PROPERTY AS A SPECTRUM
    We define private property as something over which one EXPECTS TO HAVE exclusive “monopoly” control, and common family property as something over which we expect to have limited control and consumption, and shareholder property something over which one expects to have LIMITED control and prohibition from consumption, and ‘the commons’ over which one expects to be PROHIBITED from consumption and or exclusive control, but where membership is dynamic.

    NATURE
    Many animals treat their nests, stores of food, mates and offspring as property. Humans have more complex memories, and can put objects to a multiplicity of uses.  And humans can learn to specialize in the use of certain resources to produce certain increasingly complex goods and services.

    The first value of memory is to observe resources and avoid dangers. But once we have complex memory, and the abilty to locate and store resources, we can create property, and therefore conserve energy by creating stores for  future consumption, and stores for future production.  The human mind is a is a difference engine, but the primary difference it calculates is property: what can I expect to make use of or not make use of, as a member of a family, band, tribe, or society? 

    We can speak. That we can speak and negotiate demonstrates that property is natural. Without property cooperation would be unnecessary. To debate by definition is to acknowledge the existence of property.  And we were able to speak before we were able to form governments.  We were able to trade before we were able to form governments.

    However, just because property is natural to man, and humans can peaceably cooperate by conducting voluntary exchange of property, that does not mean that humans will do the hard work of trying to satisfy the wants of others. Instead, rather than exchange, humans try to harm, steal, commit fraud, commit fraud by omission.  Rather than adhere to agreements as shareholders, humans free-ride, rent-seek, privatize assets and socialize losses.

    So, despite our natural ability to create and use property, and to negotiate exchanges and contracts, we also require the use of third parties to administer conflicts.   We have used tribal headmen, elders, priests, judges for private matters, and politicians, lawyers, advocates, and lawmaking to regulate the process of dispute resolution itself.

    However, rather than justly administer agreements people engage in all possible manner of direct and systemic corruption.  But, rather than enter political agreements honestly, they lie, cheat, defraud, deceive, use incrementalism, use coercion and bribery.

    So, despite our creation of these administrative institutions, we have created the constitutions, rule of law, and a high court so that we may limit the ability of politicians, kings, bureaucrats to conduct thefts of many kinds.  And hold them accountable.  We have enacted democratic processes to remove them from office if they commit these crimes.

    However, rather than adhere to constitutions and rule of law, people undermine the rule of law, buy voters compliance with redistribution and privileges. Threaten to replace judges if they don’t rule in the politician’s favor. 

    So, despite our creation of limits on politicians and law makers, and the bureaucracy, and judges, we must retain our ability to use violence and revolution in order to defend ourselves from those who would seek to live off our efforts rather than administer our efforts.

    Property is the result of memory. Property is necessary to make use of the vicissitudes of time, to store and produce goods. Property is necessaty to uniquely and efficiently calculate uses of resources. Property is necessary to reduce conflict over possible usees even within families and tribes. Property is necessary for the construction a division of knowledge and labor. Without which we cannot specialize, save time, and produce high value goods that make us independent of nature’s bounty.

    Property is prior to government. Government exists to resolve disputes over property.

    As our division of labor increases, it becomes useful to develop additional common property. In a marketplace, competition provides us with incentives to produce better products and services at lower coasts. Competition is the privatization of other people’s assumptions about the opportunities in the market.  However, common property, unlike private property, is hard to protect from privatization, and necessary to protect from competition, which for any commons, is just a theft from those who organize and pay for the commons by those who fail to organize and pay for the commons. In the market competition and privatization are desirable, but in the production of commons competition is an unnecessary cost.  Therefore, the second purpose of government is to allow the formation of commons at a discount by prohibiting privatization of any commons, and preventing free-riding on any commons  by the use of mandatory taxation.

    THE TWO NECESSARY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT
    These are the only two necessary properties of government.  In order to perform these functions any body of people must have a portfolio of property definitions that describe each kind of property on the spectrum from private to commons. Most difficulties arise from the failure for societies to do so. One of the reasons the west was (and partly remains) superior in economic per capita perormance is that more of the property in the civilization is privatized, and therefore available for frictionless use, and therefore as an incentive for individuals to act to better their status.

    CLOSING
    I won’t carry this further for now, and it is a book length topic, but it is probably the most, if not only, accurate description of property and government that you will be able to find, despite extraordinary efforts to research the subject. That is because I’ve tried to articulate the necessary properties of government not the multitude of abuses we can put it to.

    Cheers
    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-private-property-more-natural-than-government-Why-or-why-not-And-what-are-the-policy-implications

  • you call spirits from the deep? Can you write good laws? Waiting for Godot. Wait

    http://hisstoryisbunk.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-marxist-walks-into-bureau.htmlCan you call spirits from the deep?

    Can you write good laws?

    Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Superman.

    There is only one ‘law’ and that is property. You cannot write good laws that will be wisely administered by a bureaucracy. You can however, hire multiple firms that must compete to achieve an objective.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-05-07 15:10:00 UTC

  • LEFT COULD NOT WIN THE PEOPLE – SO IT IMPORTED THEM AND DESTROYED THE CONSTITUTI

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/immigration-reform-could-upend-electoral-college-90478.htmlTHE LEFT COULD NOT WIN THE PEOPLE – SO IT IMPORTED THEM AND DESTROYED THE CONSTITUTION, AND OUR CIVILIZATION

    Most of this has happened during my lifetime. The left could not win the hearts and minds of the people. It had to change the meaning of words. Make bads into goods, and goods into bads. It had to immigrate millions. It had to undermined the rule of law, destroy the constitution, and destroy the rights of states.

    All in pursuit of creating a democratic socialist utopia.

    It won’t take until 2050. I wrote in 2002, that it would only take until 2020, or 2025 at the longest. The only choice that the ‘middle civilization’ has against the immigrant coasts and the rust belt, is to secede. And since that won’t happen. The left will have won. And the continent will be lost, by the time those entering school graduate.

    THE LEFT HAS WON.

    A) Immigration of the third world.

    B) Feminism, and the anti-family left.

    THE LEFT HAS WON.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-04-23 10:49:00 UTC

  • How Might A Private Law Society Be A Reasonable Solution For Most Of The Social Ills Of Civilization?

    The question is somewhat misleading. A private law society requires a homogeneity of interests, and therefore is a small society.  An argument in favor of a private law society is an argument in favor of many small societies (private cities). Since society’s ills are largely the product of the opposing vales of credit at scale, but diversity of interests at scale, we generally need governments to resolve conflicts between groups with competing interests, all of whom dislike compromising, but all of whom benefit from the insurance value and credit value of a large government.

    What is important here is that Hoppe has solved the problem of large monopolistic bureaucratic government acting as an extortionary, self-interested monopoly insurer maximizing it’s profit for employees, with small cities and competing insurance companies. That this is advocating a return, en large, to the pre-empire german city states, is probably not lost on historians. It isn’t lost on  Hoppe.

    So it is a reasonable solution except that the value of credit to large populations is that they can finance the wars necessary to keep other large states at bay.  This is where the banking and fiat credit system as we understand it comes from: the finance of the wars of napoleon and britain.  Which is one of rothbard and hoppe’s reasons for trying to undermine the large monpoly state: is that it is used to finance warfare.  However, if the USA uses it to finance warfare, that means europe can use it for social programs, because europe doesn’t have to. The US then sells enough dollars as petrodollars to pay for its military, and then inflates the debt, effectively charging these countries – and the whole world, for the cost of its military.

    I hope this helps put such things in context.

    https://www.quora.com/How-might-a-Private-Law-Society-be-a-reasonable-solution-for-most-of-the-social-ills-of-civilization

  • Has The Canadian Government Ever Acknowledged The Country Formation Was A Crime?

    A crime is a violation of a contract, where laws are properties of a contract for norms within a society fo people with similar goals, manners, ethics, morals, language and reproductive strategies. Even if the contract is nautural law, and even if natural law only applies to people within a government, not across governments.  Human rights are a post-war extension of natural rights.  We have attempted to legitimize conquest only in those cases where those extended rights are violated. While it is arguable that natural rights existed at the time, it is also arguable that human rights did not exist at the time.

    But since none of these contracts apply, conquest is not a crime. There was no contract. The reason for conquest, whether by violence, or immigration, or import of religion, or revolution, is to replace one set of rights and obligations with another set of rights and obligations.

    You may dislike conquest. You may argue in retrospect that we should not conquer primitive peoples. You may argue that we should not conquer primitive peoples even if we are more beneficial conquerors than any of our competing conquerors, and therefore commit the lesser of evils.

    Conquest is not a crime unless immigration, new religion, new political parties, are a crime. Immigration, religion and political parties are implemented under the threat of violence, and therefore the only difference is the rate and means by which one conducts conquest, and the rapidity at which rights, obligations and the allocation of property is rearranged. 

    It is not clear that the french revolution, and its bloody excesses, nor the philosophy that it created, which led to marxism, and 100M murderous deaths because of marxism was not a conquest. It was. And nothing good came of it.

    Conversely, it is quite clear that the conquest spread by anglo-empirical-science, acounting, property rights and capitalism were a conquest, that in turn, raised billions out of mysticism, ignorance and poverty.

    https://www.quora.com/Has-the-Canadian-government-ever-acknowledged-the-country-formation-was-a-crime

  • If We Ever Cloned Hominids, Would They Have Human Rights?

    Rights are the product of an exchange where terms are specified in a contract. For rights to exist a contract must exist – stated or written, or assumed.

    If we cloned hominids, and cloned them sufficiently well that they could negotiate agreements with us, it is very likely that we would have to grant them NATURAL rights – because we cannot create contracts without natural rights. 

    The definntion of human right is fungible.  They are a preference.  Meaning, they are not necessary right, and as such not natural rights.  They are aspirational rights, or desired rights, that while not necessary we have asked all other people to respect.  If these clones were able to understand those rights, and consent to them, then we could grant them rights if they would grant them to us. This would be a contract for exchange, and therefore each side would have rights.  Even if these rights are not written or spoken, but just understood and adhered to.

    Animals cannot have rights because they cannot conduct an exchange with us. We treat animals as if they have rights, because we have an agreement with others to treat animals as if they have rights.  But they do not have rights.  We simply have obligations to other people to treat animals as if they have rights. Our obligation is to other humans, not to animals.

    Animals only have rights by analogy.  But human beings like to feel that rights come from somewhere supernatural, and others don’t understand the construct of rights, so they anthropomorphize animals.  This is a simple mistake, but the majority of people make it either out of ignorance or for ideological reasons.

    I hope this helps.

    https://www.quora.com/If-we-ever-cloned-hominids-would-they-have-human-rights

  • What Is A “right”?

    1) RIGHTS:
    A “right” is a claim against other members of a contract, wherein each party grants the other party something (a right) in exchange for somthing else (an obligation).  Each person then has ‘rights’ as agreed upon in the contract, as well as obligations. This is the meaning of the term ‘right’.  A right is something that you obtain from others in exchange for granting them something.  There is no other logical meaning of the term, unless you invent a god or demon, or some equivalent that you are supposedly in contract with.  (Although the term ‘right’ is abused by way of analogy and metaphor, which I will explain below.)

    2) CONTRACTS:
    A contract can be discreetly created, such as a handshake, a promise, or an agreement. Or a contract can be written as a note, a written contract, or a constitution. A contract can be created by habituation as a “norm”, such as manners, ethics and morals.

    While very few people understand this, ethical and moral statements  are those that compensate for asymmetry of information between members of a contract for norms.  This contract for norms is we call a society.  Manners are promises that you will respect ethical and moral norms.  Ethics are rules that we follow to make sure that there are no involuntary transfers of prooperty due to asymmetry of information in an exchange.  Morals are general rules that we will follow to make sure there are no involuntary transfers from others who are outside (external to) any action or exchange.  (Having a chid that you cannot pay for, and expecting others to support it, is an involuntary transfer from others. That is why it’s generally been considered immoral.)

    One can voluntarily enter discreet contracts.  But normative contracts are a necessity because people cannot peacefully and productively cooperate without them. One can generally move between groups with different normative contracts (societies, and communities) but it  is all but impossible to avoid them entirely, and it is entirely impossible to exist in a community without adhering to that contract – usually people are excluded from opportunity, punished, imprisoned, ostracized, or deported, for violations of the normative contract.

    3) NATURAL RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are both necessary for humans to engage in contracts, and possible to grant in contracts. Such as surrendering our opportunity for violence  theft and fraud, from those with whom we are in contract. If we surrender our opportunity to use violence theft and fraud, we define this set of forgone opportunities “property rights’.  Because these rights are necessary for peaceful cooperation, and necessary for contracts to function, we call these necessary rights ‘Natural Rights’ – in an effort to limit the ability of governments to violate the contract rights that are necessary for human cooperation when they make laws.

    If we define our minds and bodies as our property. And we define those objects, that we freely obtained through exchange as our property, then there is only one natural right and that is property. It is the only right necessary, and the only right universally possible to grant to one another – because we must refrain from something, rather than do something.  In this sense, there is only one possible human right, and all other rights derive from it.

    3) HUMAN RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are not necessary but beneficial. These rights generally can be categorized as forms of ‘insurance’. They cannot be direclty exchanged without an intermediary institution acting as the insurer. People cannot equally contribute to their costs.  We call these rights ‘Human Rights’.

    4) DEMANDED RIGHTS:
    Now this is not to say that you have no control over your rights. You can for example (and we all do) demand additional rights in exchagne for our compliance with manners, ethics, morals, norms, laws that are levied equally against all. These rights are not human rights, they are not natural rights.  They are rights that you demand for your compliance.  THe problem is, that means that they are just a preference.  That’s all.  You must get a right in exchange even if you demand it, it cannot exist until there is a contract for it, somehow. And we can cause discomfort, economic friction, and political resistance. Or we can offer to contribute more somehow in exchange for additional rights.  In this sense, most arguments are in favor of demanded rights, in the form of FREE RIDING, PRIVILEGES, RENTS, and DIVIDENDS.

    5) FREE RIDING (CORRUPTION)
    Free riding is letting other people pay for something that you enjoy. Voting for a tax that you don’t have to pay is free riding.  Living off your parents is free riding.

    5) PRIVILEGES (CORRUPTION):
    Sometimes we attempt to seek privileges not rights – a privilege is something that unlike insurance, is something we are likely to obtain, and which comes at a cost to others, without our providing something else in exchange. These are not rights, but privileges at the expense of others.

    6) RENTS (CORRUPTION)
    In contemporary politics, unscrupulous people attempt to label privileges as rights, so that they can obtain something from others at no cost to themselves   This is not seeking rights but seeking privileges. It is a form of corruption, which is just an indirect form of theft.

    In economics, seeking privileges from government is a form of corruption called ‘rent-seeking’. (Which admittedly, is an old and confusing name.  In previous centuries, people would seek to obtain an interest in land so that they could collect rents on it.)  Today, people seek an interest in tax revenue so that they can collect income from it.  This is Rent-Seeking. The government, in practice, if not in theory, owns all land, and we rent it from the government by taxes. If you cannot pay your taxes, you cannot keep your land.  Taxes today, are no different from taxes under feudalism. We have just replaced private landowners with a political bureaucracy. In both cases we are renting our land, and in many cases the homes we build, from the government. Taxes are our rents.  And people who seek to own part of taxes are rent-seekers.

    7) DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)
    if you obey norms (manners, ethics and morals) and obey natural rights (property), you do so at a cost to you.

    If you think of society as a business (it is, because it must be), and the business is to grow the local market (it is, at least to maintain it), because everyone in the local market will profit from it. (they do). Then these businesses (societies) grow through phases, just as businesses do (or really, business go through phases like society does, just a lot faster because they’re smaller), and in certain early phases(startups) they require a lot of investments from their shareholders (citizens), and in other phases they produce tremendous surpluses (mature, commoditized businesses), then we can see that most of the problem we deal with in politics, is who makes what contributions, and who collects what dividends, and how those dividends are used.

    PROBLEMS WITH DETERMINING DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)

    It is very hard to argue against dividends (redistribution) if people respect (adhere to) manners, ethics, morals, and natural rights (property rights), as well as whatever arbitrary laws are created that affect all people equally.

    The general argument, which is true, is that by adhering to maners, ethics, morals, natural rights and arbitrary laws, you earn the right to participate in the market for goods and services.  And that dividends are a due only to those people who provide goods and services in the market.  The problem is that a market can’t exist without consumers, and that consumption is equally as important as production and distribution.  You can’t have one without the other.  So this argument is at best, empirically weak.

    The problem with dividends (redistribution) is not the logical requirement for dividends (redistribution), but the problem with how to determine what a dividend is,  how to collect them, who has earned them, and how to allocate them, and how to distribute them.

    But I will have to leave that  rather lengthly discussion for another time. 🙂

    This is very close to the ‘final word’ on rights. It is extremely hard to criticize this series of statements using any form of rational argument.  I will be happy to engage literate people on the topic but ask the moderators for their help.

    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-right

  • REVOLUTION (Expensive and destructive) SECESSION (Expensive) NULLIFICATION (dirt

    REVOLUTION (Expensive and destructive)

    SECESSION (Expensive)

    NULLIFICATION (dirt cheap.)

    Nullification is the least expensive and least procedurally complex means of weakening the central government.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-08 11:40:00 UTC

  • WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW Absence of the rule of law, is t

    http://www.chadbourne.com/files/upload/Ukraine_GeneralLegalConsiderations_BusinessUkraine_2011.pdfWHAT’S WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW

    Absence of the rule of law, is the absence of property rights.

    “In short, Ukraine, like other former Soviet countries, suffers not only from a lack of suitable legislation and regulation and from considerable doubt as to how the courts will interpret the existing laws and rules, but from the concomitant absence of a belief in and respect for a “rule of law.” – Chadbourne, Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 12:53:00 UTC

  • NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION 1) Nullification. Inexpens

    NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION

    1) Nullification.

    Inexpensive. Weakens tyranny, allows greater social experimentation, preserves existing economy, promotes local opportunity while preserving federated trade, credit, insurance and military assets.

    2) Secession.

    Expensive. Eliminates tyranny, allows greater social experimentation. Creates opportunity, improves the economy, and autonomy. Allows adaptation of institutions. *Can* weaken credit, insurance, and military assets. Can also improve them.

    3) Revolution.

    Devastatingly expensive. Damages the economy, social capital, institutional capital, trade, credit, insurance, and military assets.

    Revolution carries a very high cost. The choice between Nullification and Secession is simply whether the value of the federated services of insurance, trade, credit and military are more or less valuable. Assuming that the federated system is anywhere near solvent, nullifying LAWS while retaining legitimate functions of a federal system – largely as insurer of last resort – inexpensively reduces the state to it’s only beneficial function.

    We needed a federal government because we had a vast continent that could be occupied by competitive international powers. This federated system allowed us to conquer that territory, and insure no foreign power did so instead. This strategy worked.

    But that was the ONLY REASON for the federal government at the time.

    At present, the federal government has only one redeeming value, and that is as insurer of last resort, and provider of military services too costly for independent states to field on their own.

    Nullification is the systematic means by which to devolve the united states federal government from a law-making body to a body that does nothing but provide insurer of last resort services.

    (Originally under Dave Quick’s excellent post on nullification – Here for record purposes.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 04:27:00 UTC