Curt Doolittle

Theme: Crisis

  • Fear and The Rise of China Post 2: A Lesson In US Military and Geopolitical Pragmatism

    In my Time Magazine reply to “Why do westerner’s fear the rise of China”, someone challenged me with:

    You make the westerner seem as if he actually walks around Afghanistan and iraq folding hands and asking people to be quiet and china being the only country forcing power on others.

    I don’t make that assertion at all. I (correctly) list the reasons why westerners fear a rise in China. You make the error of treating geopolitical strategy as if we’re dividing up a loaf of bread for dinner. One can criticize individual actions of nations, or one can create an full accounting of the accomplishments and failures, and then to discern the motivations for those actions. Americans have had very simplistic objectives for the past century. 1) take over the collapsed british empires’ navy and trade routes. 2) take over the collapsed british pound 3) defeat communism and spread market democracy, 4) protect the oil fields in the old ottoman empire from being used as economic warfare against developing nations until those nations are ready to mature into market societies. Sinic civilization, or rather the Chinese empire of north china, south china, the interior, Mongolia and Tibet, has a strong central state and a long standing bureaucratic tradition. After it’s devastating failure with communism, and the most expansive destruction of human life in history, Chinese intellectuals decided to give up on Communism and instead adopt authoritarian capitalism. Their efforts at doing so, despite being dependent entirely upon imported technology, has resulted in a vast movement of people from abject poverty to the consumer lifestyle. It is a difficult climb. But they are making progress. Islamic civilization, which is more correctly viewed as the collapsed remnants of the Ottoman Empire, is still institutionally and culturally primitive, remains incapable of resolving the entho-tribal geographic conflicts, or even educating it’s people above sub-saharan african levels. Islamic civilization lacks a core state – a core state which holds other states in their civilization accountable in the international community – and therefore makes external intervention unnecessary. I am quite sure it is humiliating for members of Islamic nations to hold to a personal religion and political doctrine of superiority, while faced with the daily evidence of the inferiority of the civilization and it’s people in the world arena. I am sure that it is frustrating that the west has maintained a policy of containment on the post-ottoman islamic nations, in the hope that they will skip the communist phase of evolution and directly join the modern market economy. I am sure that it is exasperating that the west has propped up dictators as a means of preventing yet another series of marxist states that will even further repress and regress their citizens. I am sure it is frustrating to have the west, yet again, for the fifth or sixth time in human history, hold the middle eastern people’s at bay in order to prevent the spread of ‘magical’ society, and it’s endemic pervasive ignorance. I am sure that it is frustrating that the west is split between those people who think islamic nations are insufficiently mature for democracy, and those who evangelically spread the idea of democracy without understanding that democracy is a government for a mercantile and commercial society – which is alien to islamic nations. I am sure all of these things are frustrating. Do muslims actually think the average American wants to pay for maintaining the pattern of world commerce and trade? Do they think that American citizens like losing money and the lives of soldiers to contain Marxism, now Islam – Radical Islam is just another iteration of Marxism. Don’t they think we wouldn’t rather spend our lives and money on other things? Most of us just wish muslims would just grow up and take care of their own house, so that we don’t have to act like their parents any longer. The question is then, what can they do so that it is unnecessary for others to interfere in their affairs. Westerners fear the rise of China for the same reason they fear the Islamist movement: because they are both regressive social orders that are only rising out of ignorance and poverty due to western technology, western medicine, western ideas, western education, western institutions, and the emphasis on universal trade that the west exports. And most of us look at China as either one of our great successes in transformation of a primitive society, despite their corrupt and kleptocratic political system and the fact that we Americans are paying for the transformation with our jobs, or we look at china as a systematically corrupt society that will simply disturb and destroy the system of world trade that we have developed over the past five hundred years, and return us to a world of physical rather than economic conflict. The question is, which will it be? The US would like to withdraw it’s military efforts around the world in order to account for our relative decrease in world economic dominance. It is simply too expensive to let other countries save military expenditures and force us to pay them. particularly the western europeans that treat us with distain on a daily basis all while they live entirely under our support and protection. The problem is that the average american is dependent upon the world system of trade, and in particular the market for oil. Americans do not want the rest of the Israelis to end up inside the USA, so they want a stable settlement of an israeli state, and for muslims to understand that israel does not breed enough people to hold that small nation for more than another century. Lastly, that rapid changes in military power create power vacuums that create expansive wars. And we cannot in good conscience allow that to happen when the world can no longer let people return to farm life. There are too many of us, and billions would starve if there were another series of world wars. There is nothing more to American geopolitical strategy than that one paragraph. So I’ll stick with my explanation of why Americans fear the rise of China. And radical islam. Primitive societies are a threat to the modern commercial order.

  • Why Do Westerners Fear A Rising China?

    Why? Why do westerners fear a rising China? Lets look at the reasons: 1) Their history with communism, and enduring love of authoritarianism 2) Systemic Human rights violations, not only in the conquered territories, but between the political north and the entrepreneurial south. 3) Endemic Corruption at all levels of society and perpetual intransigence 4) Pervasive intellectual property theft, and institutional kleptocracy 5) Rapidly expanding military capability and posture despite their geographic isolation 6) The threat of exporting their authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. 7) Their willingness to use economic warfare in commodities like specialty metals and rare earths. 8) Their threats of using our debt as a weapon of economic warfare. 9) The notorious chip on their collective shoulders at the evident failure of their social order in the face of the post-agrarian era, when competing with younger more dynamic civilizations. 10) Support for authoritarian regimes, and consistent blocking of western political initiatives a the UN. 11) The obvious translation of ‘the middle kingdom’ as ‘the center of the universe’. 12) Their obvious and consistent racism. 13) Their state supported cyber attacks on our internet, our public and private sector. 14) Their systemic use of spies to steal our technology in computer, and both naval and missile technology. If we acted like the Chinese, the Supreme Court would still be populated by protestants, blacks wouldn’t have the vote, the 60’s would have concluded with a lot of dead college students, and we would call the muslims our ‘friends’ and occupy their territory, and convert them to christianity, english, and say that their oil is ours, rather than demand that they act responsibly as market participants. So, is our fear based upon racism? It’s not racism. It’s just experience with China. China as it currently functions is a threat to our 500 year effort to drag humanity out of agrarian ignorance and subsistence poverty. What evidence do we have that the magic traits of Competition, Consumerism, Individualism, Fraternal Enfranchisement, and Rule of Law are adopted along with our technology? Our century and a half of class warfare has made us apologetic for our successes, exaggerating of our failures, and without appreciating the uniqueness and benefit we have given to humanity.

  • Why Do Westerners Fear A Rising China?

    Why? Why do westerners fear a rising China? Lets look at the reasons: 1) Their history with communism, and enduring love of authoritarianism 2) Systemic Human rights violations, not only in the conquered territories, but between the political north and the entrepreneurial south. 3) Endemic Corruption at all levels of society and perpetual intransigence 4) Pervasive intellectual property theft, and institutional kleptocracy 5) Rapidly expanding military capability and posture despite their geographic isolation 6) The threat of exporting their authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. 7) Their willingness to use economic warfare in commodities like specialty metals and rare earths. 8) Their threats of using our debt as a weapon of economic warfare. 9) The notorious chip on their collective shoulders at the evident failure of their social order in the face of the post-agrarian era, when competing with younger more dynamic civilizations. 10) Support for authoritarian regimes, and consistent blocking of western political initiatives a the UN. 11) The obvious translation of ‘the middle kingdom’ as ‘the center of the universe’. 12) Their obvious and consistent racism. 13) Their state supported cyber attacks on our internet, our public and private sector. 14) Their systemic use of spies to steal our technology in computer, and both naval and missile technology. If we acted like the Chinese, the Supreme Court would still be populated by protestants, blacks wouldn’t have the vote, the 60’s would have concluded with a lot of dead college students, and we would call the muslims our ‘friends’ and occupy their territory, and convert them to christianity, english, and say that their oil is ours, rather than demand that they act responsibly as market participants. So, is our fear based upon racism? It’s not racism. It’s just experience with China. China as it currently functions is a threat to our 500 year effort to drag humanity out of agrarian ignorance and subsistence poverty. What evidence do we have that the magic traits of Competition, Consumerism, Individualism, Fraternal Enfranchisement, and Rule of Law are adopted along with our technology? Our century and a half of class warfare has made us apologetic for our successes, exaggerating of our failures, and without appreciating the uniqueness and benefit we have given to humanity.

  • What Would You Learn From A Lifetime Of Studying Politics And Economics?

    Fundamentally, assuming you were intellectually honest, if you were to spend the next twenty years of your life studying political science, with the goal of long term stability and prosperity, then you would come to these conclusions:

    • The Problem

        a) Time:
        b) Space (distribution):
        d) Acting:
        c) Choosing an Action:
        d) Memory:
        e) Limited Knowledge:
        f) Planning:
        g) Opportunity Costs:
        h) Learning (imitation):
        i) Choosing What To Learn (Alphas)
      • Mankind:
        • The Genders:
        • Society
          • A Society is it’s Market
          • Productivity
        • Institutions:
          • Cultural-Forgone Opportunities:
          • Time Preference
          • Suppression Of Corruption
          • A System Of Property Definitions
          • Metaphysical Objectives
          • Administrative and Procedural:
          • Cooperative Institutions
          • Meritocratic Rotation of Elites / Denial Of Non Meritocratic Access:
          • Recognizing New Rules
          • Coordinating Of Group Investments:
          • Means Of Resolving Differences:
          • Limits On Power
        • Government:
        • hereditary monarch
        • aristocracy
        • democratically elected common house
          • Monarchy:
        • Rule Of Law:
          • Redistribution:

            7) Failure: Governments and empires fail for these reasons:

            • Debasement:
            • Overextension:
            • Birth Rates:
            • Money:
            • Trade Routes:
            • Calculative Institutions:
            • Irrationalism:
            • Cultural Habits/Opportunity Costs:
            • Externalities:
            • Disasters:

            8) Three Types Of Coercion

              9) Social and Economic Classes 10) Human Failure:

                11) Failures Of Political Discourse a) the multitude of transfers 12) The Hierarchy Of Argument

                  13) Personal Ethics a) Speak The Truth, and at worst say nothing b) Do Nothing To Others You Would Not Want Done Unto You c) Engage in no exchange wherein the other party will ever regret his purchase. 15) Social Problems In Advanced Society a) The Loneliness and Anonymity Of The Division Of Labor and The Affect On Society b) The Difference Between The Urban And The Rural c) The Status Competition Between Groups who will seek political power to alter their condition. The utility of different governments can be determined by historical analogy, by articulated reason, by empirical study of economic performance, and by demonstrated stability against revolution, adaptability to external shocks, and the temporal duration of the system of rules itself. Under those criteria, only the class-tiered system of government survives scrutiny. In particular, democratic governments are temporary, and the result of extraordinary wealth created by conquest of new territory or trade routes. And totalitarian governments are impoverishing, regardless of circumstances. It is the combination of all forms of government so that the different social classes have institutions wich allow them to achieve their ends without detriment to the institutions of the society that is superior to forms of government that reflect the desires ONLY of certain classes of society. Our western error has been that we feel we must enfranchise everyone into the same structure without accounting for differences in our knowledge, skill, ability and preferences. Unfortunately, the horrors of the world wars caused westerners to question their civilization’s principles, rather than the rate of technological evolution and the rate of population growth, and our inability to EXTEND our system of western government fast enough to accomodate them, and instead we have, quite wrongly, thrown out the entire system rather than improving it by ADDING to our rather empirical system of government. The consequences of marxian collectivism, coinciding with feminism, the debate over slavery, and the immigration of non-western people’s, was far greater than our system could tolerate. And the reason our system could not tolerate it, was because we were still relying too much on moral religious doctrine rather than fully articulated reason: we simply did not understand the reasons our western form of government was superior.

                • French posted this short article on our education ‘bubble’. I”m trying to figure

                  http://mises.org/daily/5211/Conventional-Education-Will-Go-the-Way-of-Farming?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4da8bacf251b69e9%2C0Doug French posted this short article on our education ‘bubble’. I”m trying to figure out if it’s thought provoking. Maybe. I don’t think we’ll save on education in the future. I think that we overspend on irrelevant education, but that we could spend much less on relevant education. Unfortunately, under Democratic Secular Humanism, the university is the church. And good luck getting the church to change it’s doctr

                  Source date (UTC): 2011-04-15 17:42:00 UTC

                • It Will Take All The Cuts From Ryan, Obama And Rand To Balance The Budget

                  From Mish Shedlock:

                  “Look at it this way: If we take all of the cuts the Ryan has proposed and all of the cuts the administration has proposed, we are still not there. However, if we add them together, then kill the department of energy and the department of education, and cut still more from the defense budget, we might have a solid chance at balancing the budget in 10-12 years. In other words we need more defense cuts + some of Rand Paul’s ideas + some of Paul Ryan’s ideas + some of Obama’s ideas.”

                  I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. That’s what it’s going to take. (Wonkish) And as long as we kill the department of education it’s worth it to me. But afterward, we should hang the boomers by the millions for their ignorance and stupidity. (I’m a Jones Generation, along with Gates and Jobs, not a Boomer.)

                • It Will Take All The Cuts From Ryan, Obama And Rand To Balance The Budget

                  From Mish Shedlock:

                  “Look at it this way: If we take all of the cuts the Ryan has proposed and all of the cuts the administration has proposed, we are still not there. However, if we add them together, then kill the department of energy and the department of education, and cut still more from the defense budget, we might have a solid chance at balancing the budget in 10-12 years. In other words we need more defense cuts + some of Rand Paul’s ideas + some of Paul Ryan’s ideas + some of Obama’s ideas.”

                  I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing. That’s what it’s going to take. (Wonkish) And as long as we kill the department of education it’s worth it to me. But afterward, we should hang the boomers by the millions for their ignorance and stupidity. (I’m a Jones Generation, along with Gates and Jobs, not a Boomer.)

                • Scope Of Cuts Needed: The answer is “all of the above”

                  http://www.capitalismv3.com/?p=2520The Scope Of Cuts Needed: The answer is “all of the above”.

                  Source date (UTC): 2011-04-13 22:27:00 UTC

                • you remember the first two months of the crisis, when Europe was heaping daily a

                  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/europe-s-2-trillion-of-distressed-debt-to-outstrip-u-s-market-svp-says.htmlDo you remember the first two months of the crisis, when Europe was heaping daily abuse on americans because of european superiority in banking, lending, policy and judgement? They’re far worse.

                  Source date (UTC): 2011-04-08 14:47:00 UTC

                • Is It Worth Our Efforts? An Prayer For Revolution By The Nobility

                  When we invented farming, money and cities, we had to convert the barbarians into peasants. As a consequence, we had to endure their disastrous magical religions. When we invented credit, and machines, we had to convert the peasants into proles. As a consequence, we had to endure their ridiculous Marxism and it’s murderous and impoverishing consequences. When we invented fiat money, nationalism, mass production, we had to covert the proles into consumers,. As a consequence had to endure their ridiculous redistributionism, multiculturalism, feminism, and Democratic Socialism

                  [callout]I pray thee God, deliver us unto Kings, and save us from ‘The People’.[/callout]

                  When we invented consumer credit and digital technology, we tired to to convert consumers into middle class citizens, and entrepreneurs. As a consequence we have had to endure conversion into a minority, loss of sovereignty, declining birth rates, and threats of Islamist movements. In retrospect, our advances are unwanted. The proles are a permanent resistance movement. A permanent detriment to the species. Our advances are unwanted and unappreciated. We are demonized by the lower class, not as heroes acting for the good of all but as selfish malcontents. There is never enough improvement to sate the desires of people whose real motivation is to counteract the one irreconcilable problem: The daily reality of their social status as consumers, proles, peasants and barbarians – as the lower class. Their status is written on their faces. IN their genes. In their body language. In their speech. They cannot escape it. They rail against their betters, envying what they do not have, cannot have, and would not have, but for the efforts of their betters. Why then, do we simply not return the consumers, proles, and peasants to barbarism and ourselves to nobility in the process? The proles act as if their threats of revolution are meaningful. When, the opposite is just as clearly true: That the strong can easily eat the weak. Maybe it’s time to recognize the futility of our heroism. The few have always been able to buy the cooperation of a minority willing to oppress the rest. If only in our self defense. To stop them from destroying the world we have made. “I pray thee God, deliver us unto Kings, and save us from ‘The People’.”