Curt Doolittle

Theme: Deception

  • (INTRODUCTORY READING 6) RATIONALISTS JUST HAVE IT BACKWARDS – JUSTIFICATION RAT

    (INTRODUCTORY READING 6)

    RATIONALISTS JUST HAVE IT BACKWARDS – JUSTIFICATION RATHER THAN CRITICISM.

    “The Silver Rule Wins over The Golden Rule Too – for the same reason.”

    Macro economic phenomenon are emergent and non-deducible even if they are explainable. As such economics is no different from any other constructed upon laws : theories of arbitrary precision open to constant reformation. For economic theories to be testified as true, we must demonstrate that they are open to construction by sympathetic tests.

    As such, just as the golden rule is backwards, and the silver rule is correct, Mises just has praxeology backwards, it’s that we can’t claim something is true unless we can explain it as rational actions, but that does not mean we cannot rely upon observations and instrumentation to help us observe and criticize emergent phenomenon. Empiricists claim that other than some intrinsic simple intuitions (grammar, intention, status signal, and empathy etc), all knowledge is gained from sense experience, and this includes all deductions (cognitive science agrees with this hypothesis). This is obvious to people educated after 1980, when cognitive science began to replace psychology, and accelerated after 2000, when pinker restated cognition.

    Instrumentalists argue, correctly, that phenomenon must be reduced to stimuli open to human sense experience and comparison. This is also obvious.

    But then how do we test our hypothesies? We cannot subjectively test physical phenomenon, nor can we reason with the first principles of the universe – we don’t know them.

    So for physical phenomenon we must create experiments to test our hypothesis, where in human phenomenon the same test results are obtained by introspection: if subject to the same stimuli would a reasonable person come to the same conclusion? We could not judge intent or trust others if we did not have this ability so we are marginally indifferent in our ability to judge intentions if possessed of similar (symmetric) knowledge. (This is why informational symmetry is so important.)

    So in matters of human action where we know the first principles, all phenomenon, whether deducible or emergent, must be explainable as a sequence of rational human actions each of which is subject to subjective testing by means of information and sympathy – or it cannot be true. Just as all measurements (observations) of physical tests must be possible to perform in order for the claims of the test to be true. (Bridgman). Just as all mathematical proofs must be open to construction via basic mathematical operations for them to be true. Just as any propertarian law must be constructed from productive, fully informed, warrantied, voluntary transfers free of negative externality.

    So all scientific disciplines are identical in dependence upon empirical (sense experience) instrumental (reduction to sense experience) operational (existentially possible) constraints.

    THE COUNTER-PROPOSITION

    No one disagrees that if economic phenomenon are not explainable in rational terms that the theory cannot be true.

    The question of economic science is how we can take advantage of emergent phenomenon to bring forward productivity and consumption (wealth) as a means of improving the commons. This is the purpose of credit and interest. But this principle can be applied in hundreds of permutations throughout the economy.

    The moral (German Austrian) implication, is that this study must eschew immoral manipulation (thefts) and work only to improve the institutional means of moral cooperation without the conduct of thefts.

    The immoral (anglo empirical) implication is that this study should seek Pareto optimums (Rawlsian ethics) by reframing ‘harm’ by discounting loss of choice by some to redistribute choice to others.

    I agree with the German thesis, and expressly disagree with the anglo universalist fallacy which has gotten us to this state entirely because anglos were able to seduce the germans into the world war.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-24 13:30:00 UTC

  • (INTRODUCTORY READING 8) WHICH IS MORE LIKELY THE CASE: A PURPOSEFUL DECEPTION O

    (INTRODUCTORY READING 8)

    WHICH IS MORE LIKELY THE CASE: A PURPOSEFUL DECEPTION OR THE POSSIBILITY OF ANTI-SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM?

    That people “do things for reasons” tells us precisely nothing about the emergent effects of economic phenomenon, nor how to manipulate the economic information system such that we shift production and consumption forward.

    That people do things for reasons tells us precisely nothing about the temporal relations between cause and effect, and whether we can manipulate conditions to mitigate effects or change time.

    That people do things for reasons tells us precisely nothing about how to deduce emergent phenomenon. Scientists were borne out and praxeology abandoned: praxeology was unfruitful as a means of exploration. And it was unfruitful because the information necessary to perform a deduction (which what a deduction requires) does not exist in the axioms. THIS IS NON ESCAPABLE DEFECT OF AXIOMATIC PRAXEOLOGY – which is why Mises and Rothbard both had to admit that economics was both rational and empirical. One cannot deduce true conclusions from false premises. And incomplete premises provide insufficient information for the construction of deductive truths.

    So what is more likely? That instrumentalism empiricism, operational definitions and intuitionistic testing are necessary in economics just as they are in all fields? Or that economics is somehow “unique”, and that rationalism is just another authoritarian program with a deceptive hidden agenda masked by obscurantist language?

    Even if both propositions were demonstrably equally fruitful, which one is warrantable? In other words, if you will be put to death for being wrong, in a choice between a rationally deduced justification and a ratio empirically criticized definition, which do you choose to bet your life upon? It is one thing to make a statement of faith, another to review the history of rationalist thought, and particularly of cosmopolitan rationalism, and concluding that it has been and remains a failed enterprise.

    Mises only wants to ban government interference in the economy so that he can persist in non-contribution to the commons, and systemic parasitism. All his work is a justification of that separatist ambition.

    Mises suggests we create a model out of economic laws, but admits that we must use empirical evidence to identify those laws. So just as we create a model of physical reality without nowing first principles, we create a model of cooperative economic reality knowing first principles. But just as we may never deduce the full compliment of permutations and emergent phenomenon from simple physical rules (see Fractal logic) we may never deduce the full compliment of permutations and emergent phenomenon from simple behavioral rules. This is the nature of complexity. As such, while we can explain emergent phenomenon we cannot deduce it. And without instrumentation we cannot observe it.

    I think the entire intellectual world has explained sufficiently that the promise of praxeology is nonsense. I think that we now understand the anglo, german and cosmopolitan errors. I think it is obvious that praxeology is a defense of cosmopolitan separatism – an attempt to prohibit the production of an economic commons that is inescapable by free riders.

    I think the whole intellectual world has demonstrated convincingly that economics is practiced as a science, and must be practiced as a science, and that all insights of the German Austrians were added to mainstream economics, and the jewish Austrian movement was abandoned as unscientific (untrue). It is only recently that we know the motivations for creating an untrue proposition – or at least an unproductive pseudoscientific resistance movement. Just as marx, cantor, and freud were cosmopolitan pseudoscientific reactionaries, mises and rothbard were cosmopolitan pseudoscientific reactionaries.

    I am trying only to demonstrate the libertine movement, like all three cosmopolitan movements, is an obscurantist and dishonest one, so that in the future others can outlaw all obscurantists attacks on high trust civilization by mystical, rationalist and pseudoscientific means.

    I originally meant only to criminalize Postmodernism, until I understood that socialism, postmodernism, libertinism, and neo-conservatism had the same objective – the destruction of the western high trust ethic, and the western competitive advantage of creating commons, by preventing the construction of commons, licensing parasitism on any commons, and forcing the people to pay the costs of adventurism that is against their self interest but within their moral dispositions.

    As such, all libertine arguments, like all cosmopolitan arguments, are either lies by their originators, or vectors for lies by unwitting fools.

    As such it is necessary to construct an honest, truthful, scientific institutional model for the construction of a condition of liberty by the only means possible: expansion of property rights to prohibit all such forms of fraud and theft by obscurantist deception.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-24 13:18:00 UTC

  • Libertine Argument Makes Libertarians Look Stupid And Hurts The Liberty Movement – Every Single Time It Is Written Or Uttered


    http://mises.org/library/should-economics-emulate-natural-sciences

    [P]seudoscience hurts us. Conspiracy theory hurts us. Immoralism hurts us. Rothbard hurts us every day. MI has got to stop their absurdity. Cosmopolitanism, Marxism, Socialism, Postmodernism, Libertinism, and Neoconservatism are all dead campaigns from the era when we assumed democracy would prevail, and ideologies were needed to use the voting booth or revolution in order to sieze power. They were lies. Very complex lies. The high art of lying was invented in the construction of monotheism, and mastered over many generations to emerge as german rationalism and cosmopolitan pseudoscience.

    FALLACIES
    The argument in the article is false. We *MAY* not be able to ascertain the first principle, or principles of the physical universe – although that appears increasingly likely that we can. Certainly Hawking thinks we are less than a century away from it. It is becoming difficult to understand how we might even fail to understand it.

    Laws in physics can absolutely be established at given scales, newton’s laws are precise enough for all human action at human scale. Einstein’s laws are precise enough for all possible human actions that we are currently capable of. But just as Einstein did not falsify newton’s laws within human scale, it is very unlikely that any further advancement in theoretical physics will invalidate Einstein’s theories at the scale in which he applied them. THe fact that we can use plasma cutters does not mean carpenters were engaged in error, only that they were working at lower degrees of precision – at human scale.

    We have observed many laws in the physical universe that are constant within a given scale, and since all actions take place within a given scale, we require only precision within a scale necessary for action. (this is a profound statement that is easily overlooked in our search for a single rule (an ideal type) rather than a spectrum of rules applicable for actions at any given scale.)

    We may also, in the future, see odd permutations in the physical universe that we cannot explain, but that we need not repeat study of once those laws are understood. Except that is, when we pass beyond one scale or another. This is the reason for experimentation, NOT CONFIRMATION. The reason science requires operational demonstration is that we cannot anticipate the limits (scale) of any set of premises. And as we saw with time and length, very basic assumptions about the world change at different scales of precision. The subatomic world may seem very small and imaginary but we reach that scale far more quickly than we seem to think – and we toss around numbers that represent quantities, and mathematical measurements, that are far larger than than the smallest possible physically existential meaning of the term ‘length’.


    HUMAN AFFAIRS
    In human affairs we may reduce economic propositions to a sequence of necessary human actions, and all such human actions are decidable – at least in the aggregate. This is true. Because we ourselves are identical enough in our ability to sympathize with one another’s decisions to make rational choices. But we cannot yet make the same claim about the physical universe.
    We cannot say the same about groups of humans either – except at general, and abstract scale. So when we make a statemetn about commercial human action, that tells us very little. Prices are most often marginally indifferent, and for other than commodities, we make most of our decisions by other means. The general behavior of populations varies significantly from country to country (Russian tolerance for suffering, and American tolerance for change as interesting examples.) And these biases are not deducible from first principles even if, under some scrutiny and with some work, they are explainable (operationalizable).


    We still do not now for example, how long it takes and under which conditions a minimum wage will propagate through the economy, we only know that as a general rule that it will have some negative affect on some people or other. We can deduce (and frequently measure) that it produces permanently unemployable who miss bottom entry into the workforce.
    But this does not tell us much of value, it is like saying the wind blows most often from the west, but tells us nothing how we should navigate the sea from bristol to the cape this season.


    We may never be able to model gasses or protein foldings or economies particularly well other than in the aggregate. We may not be able to make general statements about human beings either except in the aggregate. But it is very likely that we can make general statements about humans and gasses sufficient for all necessary, possible, and affordable human action regarding humans and gasses.


    Just as new property rights applications must be invented (laws), in human affairs, just as in the physical universe, the consequences of complexity are vast, and require constant empirical measurement, because humans are always inventing new ways of doing things and any action we took yesterday has produced multiple adaptations. The universe is not. It cannot try to outwit itself, but man is constantly benefitting from outwitting the course of events and capturing the difference in states for his benefit.


    I could go on, but I have beaten this particular rothbardian fallacy to death already – not that I needed to since Einstein did it himself.

    To know anything of any scale that is not directly experiential we must make use of different technologies to compensate for our limited cognitive and perceptive abilities:


    Instrumental (measurable if not observable)
    Empirical (observable and recordable)
    Operational (existentially demonstrable)
    Logical (internal consistency)
    Decidable (sufficient information to make a decision)
    Theoretical ( Hypothesis->Theory->Law)

    THE CORRECT ARGUMENT – REPAIRING THE ROTHBARDIAN FALLACY

    1) All economics is empirical, just as all sciences are empirical. It is just that we do not require hypothetical or instrumental means of testing propositions in economics – we ourselves are the instrument and as such are capable of determining whether propositions are decidable and how.

    2) Economists do not try to understand man except as a byproduct of their work – they try to understand how to use Fiscal, Monetary, Trade, Educational, Cultural, and institutional Policy to produce economic velocity. To cast their work as the study of action is dishonest, and to cast economics as the study of human action is dishonest, since human action is primarily subjective, cooperative, moral and reproductive and only economic as a consequence, of being subjective, cooperative, moral and reproductive

    3) Economic interference IS IMMORAL when it causes involuntary transfers (independent of prohibiting free riding), or negative externalities. It is not unscientific. It’s just immoral. We don’t need to make pseudoscientific nonsense-arguments based upon absurd marxist and german rationalism in order to criticize redistributive economics in an attempt at imitating marxist socialist and postmodern methods of argumentative deception. Economic interference is immoral. it’s theft. It’s involuntary transfer. It’s not unscientific. It’s just theft. That’s all. Theft is just as open to scientific analysis as is voluntary exchange.

    The opposite is true: it is unscientific to claim that economics isn’t instrumental, empirical, operational, decidable and theoretical – just like all human knowledge. It’s dishonest (and false) to state that economic premises are apodictically certain at other than very large scale and in unpredictable time frames. Einstein demonstrably killed apriorism for non-reductio cases forever – and economics is not a reductio domain.

    4) The study of MORAL Economics would be the discipline of political economy and the institutional means by which to facilitate voluntary exchanges between individuals for the construction of commons without the need for involuntary redistribution to produce commons. This is what I have tried (and I think succeeded) in doing in Propertarianism.

    It is non-rational to adopt the ghetto ethic of denying the competitive value of commons, when hight rust and property rights themselves are commons that were only producible in the west because the west’s primary competitive advantage is in the production of COMMONS. As such an attack on commons is an attack on the west. (Which is in no small part the cosmopolitan strategy.) And it is this immorality that I chastise in rothbardians on a daily basis.

    A government of voluntary exchanges in the production of commons is no more immoral than a market of voluntary exchanges for the purpose of production, trade, distribution and consumption. None.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

  • Libertine Argument Makes Libertarians Look Stupid And Hurts The Liberty Movement – Every Single Time It Is Written Or Uttered


    http://mises.org/library/should-economics-emulate-natural-sciences

    [P]seudoscience hurts us. Conspiracy theory hurts us. Immoralism hurts us. Rothbard hurts us every day. MI has got to stop their absurdity. Cosmopolitanism, Marxism, Socialism, Postmodernism, Libertinism, and Neoconservatism are all dead campaigns from the era when we assumed democracy would prevail, and ideologies were needed to use the voting booth or revolution in order to sieze power. They were lies. Very complex lies. The high art of lying was invented in the construction of monotheism, and mastered over many generations to emerge as german rationalism and cosmopolitan pseudoscience.

    FALLACIES
    The argument in the article is false. We *MAY* not be able to ascertain the first principle, or principles of the physical universe – although that appears increasingly likely that we can. Certainly Hawking thinks we are less than a century away from it. It is becoming difficult to understand how we might even fail to understand it.

    Laws in physics can absolutely be established at given scales, newton’s laws are precise enough for all human action at human scale. Einstein’s laws are precise enough for all possible human actions that we are currently capable of. But just as Einstein did not falsify newton’s laws within human scale, it is very unlikely that any further advancement in theoretical physics will invalidate Einstein’s theories at the scale in which he applied them. THe fact that we can use plasma cutters does not mean carpenters were engaged in error, only that they were working at lower degrees of precision – at human scale.

    We have observed many laws in the physical universe that are constant within a given scale, and since all actions take place within a given scale, we require only precision within a scale necessary for action. (this is a profound statement that is easily overlooked in our search for a single rule (an ideal type) rather than a spectrum of rules applicable for actions at any given scale.)

    We may also, in the future, see odd permutations in the physical universe that we cannot explain, but that we need not repeat study of once those laws are understood. Except that is, when we pass beyond one scale or another. This is the reason for experimentation, NOT CONFIRMATION. The reason science requires operational demonstration is that we cannot anticipate the limits (scale) of any set of premises. And as we saw with time and length, very basic assumptions about the world change at different scales of precision. The subatomic world may seem very small and imaginary but we reach that scale far more quickly than we seem to think – and we toss around numbers that represent quantities, and mathematical measurements, that are far larger than than the smallest possible physically existential meaning of the term ‘length’.


    HUMAN AFFAIRS
    In human affairs we may reduce economic propositions to a sequence of necessary human actions, and all such human actions are decidable – at least in the aggregate. This is true. Because we ourselves are identical enough in our ability to sympathize with one another’s decisions to make rational choices. But we cannot yet make the same claim about the physical universe.
    We cannot say the same about groups of humans either – except at general, and abstract scale. So when we make a statemetn about commercial human action, that tells us very little. Prices are most often marginally indifferent, and for other than commodities, we make most of our decisions by other means. The general behavior of populations varies significantly from country to country (Russian tolerance for suffering, and American tolerance for change as interesting examples.) And these biases are not deducible from first principles even if, under some scrutiny and with some work, they are explainable (operationalizable).


    We still do not now for example, how long it takes and under which conditions a minimum wage will propagate through the economy, we only know that as a general rule that it will have some negative affect on some people or other. We can deduce (and frequently measure) that it produces permanently unemployable who miss bottom entry into the workforce.
    But this does not tell us much of value, it is like saying the wind blows most often from the west, but tells us nothing how we should navigate the sea from bristol to the cape this season.


    We may never be able to model gasses or protein foldings or economies particularly well other than in the aggregate. We may not be able to make general statements about human beings either except in the aggregate. But it is very likely that we can make general statements about humans and gasses sufficient for all necessary, possible, and affordable human action regarding humans and gasses.


    Just as new property rights applications must be invented (laws), in human affairs, just as in the physical universe, the consequences of complexity are vast, and require constant empirical measurement, because humans are always inventing new ways of doing things and any action we took yesterday has produced multiple adaptations. The universe is not. It cannot try to outwit itself, but man is constantly benefitting from outwitting the course of events and capturing the difference in states for his benefit.


    I could go on, but I have beaten this particular rothbardian fallacy to death already – not that I needed to since Einstein did it himself.

    To know anything of any scale that is not directly experiential we must make use of different technologies to compensate for our limited cognitive and perceptive abilities:


    Instrumental (measurable if not observable)
    Empirical (observable and recordable)
    Operational (existentially demonstrable)
    Logical (internal consistency)
    Decidable (sufficient information to make a decision)
    Theoretical ( Hypothesis->Theory->Law)

    THE CORRECT ARGUMENT – REPAIRING THE ROTHBARDIAN FALLACY

    1) All economics is empirical, just as all sciences are empirical. It is just that we do not require hypothetical or instrumental means of testing propositions in economics – we ourselves are the instrument and as such are capable of determining whether propositions are decidable and how.

    2) Economists do not try to understand man except as a byproduct of their work – they try to understand how to use Fiscal, Monetary, Trade, Educational, Cultural, and institutional Policy to produce economic velocity. To cast their work as the study of action is dishonest, and to cast economics as the study of human action is dishonest, since human action is primarily subjective, cooperative, moral and reproductive and only economic as a consequence, of being subjective, cooperative, moral and reproductive

    3) Economic interference IS IMMORAL when it causes involuntary transfers (independent of prohibiting free riding), or negative externalities. It is not unscientific. It’s just immoral. We don’t need to make pseudoscientific nonsense-arguments based upon absurd marxist and german rationalism in order to criticize redistributive economics in an attempt at imitating marxist socialist and postmodern methods of argumentative deception. Economic interference is immoral. it’s theft. It’s involuntary transfer. It’s not unscientific. It’s just theft. That’s all. Theft is just as open to scientific analysis as is voluntary exchange.

    The opposite is true: it is unscientific to claim that economics isn’t instrumental, empirical, operational, decidable and theoretical – just like all human knowledge. It’s dishonest (and false) to state that economic premises are apodictically certain at other than very large scale and in unpredictable time frames. Einstein demonstrably killed apriorism for non-reductio cases forever – and economics is not a reductio domain.

    4) The study of MORAL Economics would be the discipline of political economy and the institutional means by which to facilitate voluntary exchanges between individuals for the construction of commons without the need for involuntary redistribution to produce commons. This is what I have tried (and I think succeeded) in doing in Propertarianism.

    It is non-rational to adopt the ghetto ethic of denying the competitive value of commons, when hight rust and property rights themselves are commons that were only producible in the west because the west’s primary competitive advantage is in the production of COMMONS. As such an attack on commons is an attack on the west. (Which is in no small part the cosmopolitan strategy.) And it is this immorality that I chastise in rothbardians on a daily basis.

    A government of voluntary exchanges in the production of commons is no more immoral than a market of voluntary exchanges for the purpose of production, trade, distribution and consumption. None.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev Ukraine

  • Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology. But lets talk a bit

    Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology.

    But lets talk a bit about the future of film.

    The medium is no longer a vehicle for storytelling, but subconscious association; and I think the medium has evolved into something separate from storytelling (the narrative).

    Human minds place greater scrutiny on ordered language than disordered imagery, and disordered imagery produces pre-cognitive associations, often appealing to pre-cognitive reactions. To some degree the narrative appeals more heavily to reason than to the intuition, while film can quite easily, like dreams, appeal more heavily to the intuition, and far less, to reason.

    It is no longer important to construct a narrative if a dream will do. Films certainly appear to be evolving rapidly toward dreams.

    I think this is the correct analysis of the evolution of the medium. The narrative or ‘puzzle’ maintains your attention while the medium communicates to your intuition.

    This is only possible with a medium other than language. Although it is possible to use suggestion via language (I use this very heavily). One can offer positive suggestions and negative suggestions.

    I think the high art of film will emerge as dream-creation because it does not require effort. And that the narrative, which is harder, and requires effort will remain the domain of storytelling.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-20 04:25:00 UTC

  • Intellectual Property (IP) In Propertarianism

    [H]ere is where I end up. And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.
    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.
    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature are a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.  Artists and writers will do their work regardless of compensation, and without compensation those who lack are will be dis-incentivized from producing it.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the rational voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” – and those criteria are violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another.

    While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory.)

    I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.
    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent to call it patenting. But the idea of funding off-book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly in medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Intellectual Property (IP) In Propertarianism

    [H]ere is where I end up. And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.
    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.
    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature are a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.  Artists and writers will do their work regardless of compensation, and without compensation those who lack are will be dis-incentivized from producing it.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the rational voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” – and those criteria are violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another.

    While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory.)

    I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.
    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent to call it patenting. But the idea of funding off-book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly in medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    Kiev, Ukraine.

  • HERE IS WHERE I END UP ON IP in PROPERTARIANISM. And it hasn’t changed much in t

    HERE IS WHERE I END UP ON IP in PROPERTARIANISM.

    And it hasn’t changed much in two years.

    1) Trademarking.

    Yes. It’s a weight and measure. And it’s testable. Violating trademarks is fraudulent.

    2) Copyrighting.

    Possibly – but only if under the model of the creative commons. Meaning free for non commercial use. I don’t care about patents anywhere near as much as I care about ending copyrights on user copyable media. It is very, very, hard to argue that pop music, film and literature is a public good – and I think the evidence is the opposite.

    The difference between my position on copyrighting and the rothbardian, is that since high trust is necessary for the voluntary formation of even a moderately anarchic polity, then the criteria for moral action necessary for a high trust society will be: “Truthfully stated, fully informed, warrantied, productive, voluntary exchange, free of negative externality” is violated by commercially profiting from the creative works of another. While it is hard to say that one should be cast as a criminal for duplicating a non-scarce good, it is another to say that one has the right to profit from it instead of its creator. It would violate the requirement that we all contribute to production rather than act parasitically in order for cooperation to be inter-temporally rational. (ie: Non-retaliatory) I can’t agree that a publisher can make money selling a book without a commission to the author. But I can agree that an author cannot prevent the copying of a book. Same for film, music, and art. And I take this position not because I like it but because I cannot logically find an alternative to it. Humans will retaliate against parasitism, and that is what defines property-en-toto.

    3) Patents.

    Possibly in rare circumstances, but only for very, very, specific public (Citizen-Shareholder) investments that would not be served by the market otherwise. It is arguable that such criteria is not in fact meaningfully similar enough to a patent. But the idea of funding off book research and development at private expense in hope of public reward is difficult to morally argue against – particularly medicine and physical science. If we wanted to put a ten billion dollar bounty on the invention of a fusion reactor that met X criteria it is hard to say that wouldn’t be a good investment.

    Again, I am not sure that this qualifies as a ‘patent’, but to prohibit a voluntarily organized polity from offering a market bounty for the off book production of a high risk good is hard to find argument against.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-12-17 15:13:00 UTC

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.

  • “Meaning” Is A Great Way of Lying

    [I]t really doesn’t matter what an author says or intends. What matters is whether its true or not- and I do not mean internally consistent, I mean externally correspondent. When we roll a bag of conceptual marbles down the hill, we do not control them – reality does. When we roll our sentences into the public it does not matter what we say or how we say it but whether what we say is true and truthful.


    Nothing marx, freud and rothbard say for example is truthfully expressed, so we cannot judge an author by his own terms, but on whether his arguments are operationally possible in reality.


    Meaning is a great way to lie. Which is useful in myths and religious dogma. It was useful in pseudosciences. It was useful in the fallacy of psychologizing. It was useful by the postmoderns. It is useful in all public speech. But it is just a perfect vehicle for lying.


    I run into this all the time, when criticizing certain authors. My favorite is still the typical economist’s reply that ‘we don’t concern ourselves with that’.


    Which makes me crazy because they do affect that which they claim to ignore, without admitting that it is precisely what they ignore that allows them to justify their work.
    Marx is better though. Best. Liar.Ever.