Curt Doolittle

Theme: Constitutional Order

  • WELL THE RULING IS UPHELD. AND I UNDERSTAND THE REASONING. I just don’t like wha

    WELL THE RULING IS UPHELD. AND I UNDERSTAND THE REASONING.

    I just don’t like what it means for health care. Glad I can afford to travel to exotic places for good care. Cause I’m going to need to.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-28 10:37:00 UTC

  • What Should Be The Rank-ordered Budget Priorities Of The U.s. Federal Government?

    (I agree with Stephan Kinsella’s answer to What should be the rank-ordered budget priorities of the U.S. Federal Government?. But I’m going to try to answer the question so that it’s possible to provide some insight.)

    Let’s look at this scientifically.

    I. The federal government, as constructed, has no vehicle for prioritization, or considering prioritization. So the federal government cannot prioritize expenses. Parliamentary government is constructed as a tactical organization with limits on it’s power, not a strategic one that must prioritize its actions. In theory an executive branch should establish such priorities, and does, but it does so in order to establish a legacy for the executive, rather than to cautiously administer the ‘trust fund’ that is the country. Instead, parliamentary organizations are vehicles for interest groups to request special claims which can then be forcibly extracted from others by means of complex involuntary transfers.

    II. We can observe what governments do when they are forced to prioritize, and when we make that observation, we find that all governments do the following:
    • a) prevent insurrection
    • b) protect their jobs
    • c) maintain the capacity for extracting income from citizens.
    • d) maintain the capacity for accumulating debt.
    They then threaten or improve those things voters care about (police, emergency, fire, school and libraries) or things voters need (roads, power, and sewer) which are operational, in while capturing as much revenue as they can for ideological programs, favored special interests, and additional personal income capture.

    III. Given what parliamentary governments actually do as tactical organizations, it’s not rational to discuss what priorities they should follow. We did not construct government in order to achieve priorities. Instead, we should discuss, what a government that followed priorities would look like, and how it would run, and how those decisions would be made.

    IV. If such a government could be constructed, and if it could survive attempts to circumvent it, then I suspect that the following would be the priority scheme that would be ‘best’ if we assume ‘best’ is something other than arbitrary. In the ase below, ‘best’ means, delivering the prosperity necessary for people to have choices, with the minimum cheating, corruption and rent seeking.
    1. Define a set of property rights (all human rights can be articulated as property rights.)
    2. Establish a geography within which those rights apply.
    3. Establish a judiciary for the resolution of differences according to the property rights.
    4. Establish registries for property (titles to anything and everything).
    5. Establish military, police, and other emergency service services to secure those rights.
    6. Establish and maintain commercial infrastructure.
    7. Establish an educational infrastructure.
    8. Given sufficient income produced from establishing commercial and educational infrastructure, allocate gains to the preferences of the people. (monuments, parks, social programs, etc.)

    In periods of duress, work backward from the end of the list to the top, cutting services such that the public is informed as to the importance of those priorities.

    https://www.quora.com/What-should-be-the-rank-ordered-budget-priorities-of-the-U-S-Federal-Government

  • Political Theory: Is The West’s Problem With Middle Eastern ‘democracy’ That It Tends To Be Religious?

    I HAVE TO DISAGREE with the other answers.

    The USA’s strategic policy equates democracy with consumer capitalism,  human rights, and economic and military stability. They are a set, for which ‘democracy” is a simply a shorthand. Which is unfortunate, since that brevity obscures the complexity of the strategy.

    The USA spent the majority of the past century trying to prevent the alternative to consumer capitalism, world communism, from developing the military and economic power necessary to interfere with world oil production, and world trade – as well as preventing the further death and suffering that are the result of managed economies.

    Therefore the simplistic statement “democracy is good”, means “Democracy that is good is democracy that advances consumer capitalism, will create states that are good world citizens and will not disrupt the world system of trade, and world production of oil.”

    The problem that the USA has with islamic states, is that, having spent the past century trying to prevent the rise of anti-capitalist states, it appears that the muslim world is going to coalesce into three or so factions all of whom are militant and at least one of whom’s ambitions  (Iran) is to control the price of oil as a means of concentrating the capital necessary to build a military strong enough to defeat the other two factions, thereby restoring the islamic empire. 

    So the USA is very cautious, and one should not confuse “democracy” which is simply the means of transitioning power, with the broader concept of democratic, consumer capitalism of small independent states all of whom are good world citizens.  Those are different things.

    Party politics is a nonsense-sport to entertain the population. The USA generally follows strategic policy, because the consequences are so serious, which is why all politicians, once in office, tend to follow it.  If the world system of trade is dramatically threatened, the average american can lose a third to a half of his standard of living in far shorter order than we did in the great depression. And at the current level of social discord, the government may not be able to prevent civil conflict.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Theory-Is-the-Wests-problem-with-Middle-Eastern-democracy-that-it-tends-to-be-religious

  • Political Theory: Is The West’s Problem With Middle Eastern ‘democracy’ That It Tends To Be Religious?

    I HAVE TO DISAGREE with the other answers.

    The USA’s strategic policy equates democracy with consumer capitalism,  human rights, and economic and military stability. They are a set, for which ‘democracy” is a simply a shorthand. Which is unfortunate, since that brevity obscures the complexity of the strategy.

    The USA spent the majority of the past century trying to prevent the alternative to consumer capitalism, world communism, from developing the military and economic power necessary to interfere with world oil production, and world trade – as well as preventing the further death and suffering that are the result of managed economies.

    Therefore the simplistic statement “democracy is good”, means “Democracy that is good is democracy that advances consumer capitalism, will create states that are good world citizens and will not disrupt the world system of trade, and world production of oil.”

    The problem that the USA has with islamic states, is that, having spent the past century trying to prevent the rise of anti-capitalist states, it appears that the muslim world is going to coalesce into three or so factions all of whom are militant and at least one of whom’s ambitions  (Iran) is to control the price of oil as a means of concentrating the capital necessary to build a military strong enough to defeat the other two factions, thereby restoring the islamic empire. 

    So the USA is very cautious, and one should not confuse “democracy” which is simply the means of transitioning power, with the broader concept of democratic, consumer capitalism of small independent states all of whom are good world citizens.  Those are different things.

    Party politics is a nonsense-sport to entertain the population. The USA generally follows strategic policy, because the consequences are so serious, which is why all politicians, once in office, tend to follow it.  If the world system of trade is dramatically threatened, the average american can lose a third to a half of his standard of living in far shorter order than we did in the great depression. And at the current level of social discord, the government may not be able to prevent civil conflict.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Theory-Is-the-Wests-problem-with-Middle-Eastern-democracy-that-it-tends-to-be-religious

  • THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLE RULES Simple rules compensate for the diversity of human in

    THE VIRTUE OF SIMPLE RULES

    Simple rules compensate for the diversity of human intellectual ability, and the variance in knowledge and experience between the ignorance of youth and the wisdom of old age.

    Do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

    Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The golden rules two sides of a coin. They produce different results – you have to adhere to both of them.)

    Speak the truth even if it leads to harm.

    Keep your promises even if it causes you losses.

    Adhere to manners, ethics and morals even if they make no sense.

    Take no other person’s words personally – they are a self description of the speaker.

    Save one fifth of everything you make.

    Read at least one book every two weeks.

    Sample every bit of life that you can – we get only one chance at it.

    Master a craft, it is how you become valuable to others.

    Master an additional new craft every seven years.

    Become a skilled and patient lover.

    Keep a dog. It will teach you loyalty and love.

    If you choose to marry, choose well, and late in life. Marrying young, romantically and poorly is the most expensive error we all make.

    There is only one law, and that is property: a prohibition in the involuntary transfer of property by violence, fraud, theft of indirection.

    We are all different. Political equality is achieved not through majority violence, but through exchanges between groups facilitated by institutions. Institutions that compensate for the inter-temporal differences in our productivity, because the incorrectly named division of labor is instead, a division of knowledge and labor in time: we function on different time frames. The future is kaleidic. And we build that future as a division of knowledge and labor and time — not because we agree upon it. But because it is what is possible for us to achieve despite our inability to agree.

    Anything else is not high mindedness, but brutal theft under the mythology of communal government.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-23 10:54:00 UTC

  • Well, Yes The Left Hates The Constitution. But Scalia Is Just Using Absurdity for Illustrative Purposes.

    via Yes, They DO Hate the Constitution! « ACGR’s “News with Attitude”. I hate to stomp on bunnies, but nonsense like this doesn’t do our movement any good:

    However, her  fellow Justice, the supposedly ultra-conservative and strict constructionist Antonin Scalia is quoted as saying “The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours…we guarantee freedom of speech and of the press, big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protest, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

    All I can think of saying is, Holy C&@p!

    It is very frightening that these “reputable” scholars and Justices do not understand the meaning and intent of the Constitution they have sworn to honor and uphold.  The drafters and ratifiers would be appalled at how the Supreme Court has “interpreted” a document meant to secure the rights of the people, not grant rights.

    In that quote, Scalia is being sarcastic. He’s saying that the constitution is insufficient a safeguard. A polity requires the people obey their own restraints. While property rights, and a constitution that protects them, and a judiciary bound to administer disputes according to them, are the necessary institutions for the defense of freedom, the institution that protects them is comprised entirely of the moral habits of the people and the people who administer those institutions in particular. We take for granted, that our suite of norms are natural to man. But they are special, and unique in the world, specifically because they are unnatural to man. Scalia is illustrating this point using absurdity. The left hates the constitution because on the one hand it gives them control of the government by semi-democratic means, but which does so on the premise of property rights. So they have their power, but are limited in the use of it. This internal conflict is traumatic for them. Conservatives are self obligated to remember their position as the group that acknowledges ever present scarcity. Libertarians are self obligated, as the intellectual wing of politics, to avoid making fools of themselves. (Not that we all haven’t done it in our careers.)

  • Well, Yes The Left Hates The Constitution. But Scalia Is Just Using Absurdity for Illustrative Purposes.

    via Yes, They DO Hate the Constitution! « ACGR’s “News with Attitude”. I hate to stomp on bunnies, but nonsense like this doesn’t do our movement any good:

    However, her  fellow Justice, the supposedly ultra-conservative and strict constructionist Antonin Scalia is quoted as saying “The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours…we guarantee freedom of speech and of the press, big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protest, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

    All I can think of saying is, Holy C&@p!

    It is very frightening that these “reputable” scholars and Justices do not understand the meaning and intent of the Constitution they have sworn to honor and uphold.  The drafters and ratifiers would be appalled at how the Supreme Court has “interpreted” a document meant to secure the rights of the people, not grant rights.

    In that quote, Scalia is being sarcastic. He’s saying that the constitution is insufficient a safeguard. A polity requires the people obey their own restraints. While property rights, and a constitution that protects them, and a judiciary bound to administer disputes according to them, are the necessary institutions for the defense of freedom, the institution that protects them is comprised entirely of the moral habits of the people and the people who administer those institutions in particular. We take for granted, that our suite of norms are natural to man. But they are special, and unique in the world, specifically because they are unnatural to man. Scalia is illustrating this point using absurdity. The left hates the constitution because on the one hand it gives them control of the government by semi-democratic means, but which does so on the premise of property rights. So they have their power, but are limited in the use of it. This internal conflict is traumatic for them. Conservatives are self obligated to remember their position as the group that acknowledges ever present scarcity. Libertarians are self obligated, as the intellectual wing of politics, to avoid making fools of themselves. (Not that we all haven’t done it in our careers.)

  • Liberty And Violence

    Liberty is purchased with the tip of a spear, the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun. It is maintained by a hard constitution, the common law, and the mastery of the violence required to prevent its subversion. Righteous indignation is litte more than sound and fury signifying nothing, and those who congratulate themselves on their conviction are merely hiding behind a facade of convenience and cowardice. Violence is a virtue not a vice. We lend our leaders our violence in exchange for liberty. If they do not give us our liberty we must take back our wealth of violence and use it until we can give it again to those who will.

  • Liberty And Violence

    Liberty is purchased with the tip of a spear, the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun. It is maintained by a hard constitution, the common law, and the mastery of the violence required to prevent its subversion. Righteous indignation is litte more than sound and fury signifying nothing, and those who congratulate themselves on their conviction are merely hiding behind a facade of convenience and cowardice. Violence is a virtue not a vice. We lend our leaders our violence in exchange for liberty. If they do not give us our liberty we must take back our wealth of violence and use it until we can give it again to those who will.

  • LIBERTY AND VIOLENCE Liberty is purchased with the tip of a spear, the point of

    LIBERTY AND VIOLENCE

    Liberty is purchased with the tip of a spear, the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun. It is maintained by a hard constitution, the common law, and the mastery of the violence required to prevent its subversion. Righteous indignation is litte more than sound and fury signifying nothing, and those who congratulate themselves on their conviction are merely hiding behind a facade of convenience and cowardice. Violence is a virtue not a vice. We lend our leaders our violence in exchange for liberty. If they do not give us our liberty we must take back our wealth of violence and use it until we can give it again to those who will.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-01 10:59:00 UTC