Curt Doolittle

Theme: Ethnoculture

  • TEN CURIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT CANADIAN SOCIAL SIGNALING It’s odd. I can walk aroun

    TEN CURIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT CANADIAN SOCIAL SIGNALING

    It’s odd. I can walk around Moscow, Paris, Istanbul, or rural Hungary and understand the cultural signals people are using. Why is it that Canadian signaling is so strange to me when it’s right next door and they speak the same language?

    (I’ve collected an interesting set of observations that foreign visitors make of the states. I’m trying to do the same for canada. The easiest country to understand is France. They have a fascinating signaling structure. But canada is hard to take apart for some reason — probably because I don’t know enough canadian economic history.)

    Most of this behavior is kind of charming. But the fact that it’s charming simply doesn’t explain WHY people develop these signals in the first place.

    1) Q: Why does every conversation about anything political end up using the Nazis as a counter example? It seems sort of ‘antique’. Or quaint. The world has moved on. Extremes are a way of actually avoiding complex issues. So I instinctually see it as a means of political self deception.

    A: I found an answer to this one: Canadians have an international sensibility and the only people one can criticize without fear of offense is the Nazis. (Of course they don’t realize that radical Islam is using the Nazi propaganda playbook and the communist social and economic strategy.)

    2) Q: Why is atheism worn like a badge of honor? Religion isn’t talked about in the states as much as it is here in eastern canada. It’s like canadians are more religious about not being religious than evangelicals are about themselves. Again, instinctually I see it as putting something down as an effort to raise one’s self up. But I suspect there is more of a reason for it. In Quebec I understand, because the church was so dominant in society. But I don’t understand the rest of canadian’s obsession with anti-religious statements. Is it a reaction to perceived american religiosity? (I don’t think canadians understand the economic value of american puritanism. It’s why we don’t have so much petty theft.)

    3) Q: Why do people wear their injuries like an affliction is a war wound, and the cast a medal? Is it to promote the virtue of their medical system? That seems to be the canadian ethos. Very strange to me. Is it part of the victims-as-heros meme?

    4) Q: Why is do Canadians grant each other the right to be oblivious? In most other germanic-language countries, you’re expected to be aware of those around you. In canada, waiting for someone to get out of the way is considered a sort of charity we should all be proud of. I mean, we all laugh at the Hindus and Asians for making shopping impossible. But what’s the deal with Canadians?

    5) Q: Decisiveness. Canadians need far more information in order to decide something than most other westerners. This surprises me. I’ll figure out where it comes from eventually. Actually, it’s more like they’ve taken British lower class skepticism and distributed it across the entire spectrum. There is really no upper class here. It’s strange. In the states we have at least two layers of them. In Russia (Did I say I loved Russia yet?) they do. Or at least they still have aristocratic sentiments somewhat like the Germans.

    6) Q: Customer Service. This is what people from other countries don’t understand about the states: the culture is the MARKETPLACE. That’s all we have in common. When you’re at your job, it’s ‘Game On’. When you go home you can relax. But we have high expectations of people who are ‘in the market’. Good customer service is a civic duty. It’s like french manners, or canadian deference, or german duty. In canada, people at work and home are little different. That’s why customer service is bad here, despite how nice people are. And really. They’re very, very nice. But why? Why didn’t they get the commercial social sentiment? I’m sure I can figure it out but I haven’t yet.

    7) Q: Product Selection: Why, if we’re just across the border, is everything more expensive, with less selection? I swear, it’s like the USA in the 1970’s. Outside of Toronto you can’t even buy nice furniture very easily. There has to be a reason for it. But selection here is terrible by contrast. Like the UK in the 80’s.

    8) Q: Health Movement. I know the health movement is a west coast thing that radiated outward, and as an Ecotopian (northwesterner) I have perhaps a odd expectation. But you literally cannot find food that isn’t saturated with every preservative and chemical on the planet. (Which for me is horrid.)

    9) Q: The Quaintness of Political Problems. Really. To travel around the world, read newspapers and journals, and blogs from around the world, and the read canadian newspapers and the MUNDANE content of most political discourse is just amazing. It’s like kids arguing over whether Darth Maul or Boba Fett is cooler. I mean, is it so peaceful, spacious, gentle and comfortable here that the locals have to make something to talk about? I went through a week’s worth of newspapers circling the factual stories. You could reduce the entire content to half a page. Such is the lot of being a resource-rich english speaking country bordered by a friendly superpower. But the question is WHY is this noisy discourse so important to Canadians. They all seem to participate and care about it… but is that because the outcomes are so indifferent? Is it all they have to build community about given that there are no external threats? I have to figure this one out. All I end up with is that canada is the most privileged country on earth right now.

    10) Q; Why less venomous racism? Living in Ottawa makes it very visible that the race problem is bigger in the states than I had thought. I understood that it was impossible to resolve in the states for historical reasons. But I didn’t realize how bad the problem was and how pervasive until I spent time here. Like the UK, the integration of blacks into society seems to be more successful than the states. I suspect this is largely an artifact of the power struggles in the states. But its painful. I still think affirmative action only exacerbates the problem.

    A couple of other things in perspective:

    0) Canada has roughly the same population as California. The population is centered along to the us-canadian border. the toronto-ottawa corridor is part of the “foundry’ culture, along with chicago, detroit, Cincinnati, new york, philadelphia. The Vancouver area is part of ecotopian culture along with san francisco, portland, and seattle. The plains provinces are indistinguishable from the US plains states, and they are culturally part of the “empty quarter” culture. Quebec is arguably its own civilization — and why english speaking canadians don’t support a quebec independence doesn’t make sense to me. Like their continental french peers, they are a blocking culture that is a hostile partner.

    1) Power and Weakness. Canada is next door to a gorilla. They don’t have to pay for military, especially per square mile — so it’s amazingly cheap to be canada. The Weak generally treat pacifism as a virtue. (see the USA vs Europe prior to 1860). I can understand this influence on canadian culture. They are very proud of their little military. It’s a symbolic force. But they treat it with dignity. I find it very appealing.

    2) Canada is unable to create innovative productivity because it is culturally too risk averse for widespread scale entrepreneurship. (Is it a cultural memory of being poor? A self concept of relative poverty that isn’t borne out by the facts? A class heritage?) And secondly, because they have a resource economy that makes high productivity unnecessary. But to pay for their social programs given the size of the country and the low population, they’ve been selling off land to immigrants like the USA did post civil war. This has not yet had the social impact in canada that it did in the 1930’s in the states. And they seem, like the english, to do a better job of integrating people than we do in the states, save for muslims, which don’t integrate anywhere in the english speaking world, even after three generations. This is probably what I see in the public discourse. I think the spatial stuff is just a remnant of ‘little england’. I know that Quebec was populated largely by members of the lower classes. Is the same true of english speaking canada? Was land that much cheaper here?

    3) Consumer banking in canada is like consumer banking in the states before 1980. It’s much better for consumers here. Business banking is … (Amateurish?) by contrast. But I’d venture that either switzerland or canada has the best consumer banking system. I mean, I could write a book about it.

    4) While there is a lot more petty crime in canada than the states (yes there is), the police are also a lot better here. Like the bankers they are here to help you. Cops in the states are there to punish and fine you. Bankers are there to soak you with fees. And that is the one thing about the USA that I have found simply intolerable. The militarization of the police force is more socially destructive than I would have predicted.

    Anyway, that’s my list of curious questions.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-03-07 15:34:00 UTC

  • EXPANSION MATCHES THE HAJNAL LINE WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Because the relationship

    http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/medieval-manoralism-and-the-hajnal-line/MANORIAL EXPANSION MATCHES THE HAJNAL LINE

    WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? Because the relationship between the protestant ethic, the inclusion of women in the work force, the relative equality of women, late marriage, consanguineous marriage. ie: The lower classes had a harder time breeding. People got smarter. Unlike now, where people are getting marginally smarter but on average the world is getting ‘dumber’.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-02-10 10:15:00 UTC

  • WHAT IS THE HAJNAL LINE? It is the line the separates the germanic manorial marr

    WHAT IS THE HAJNAL LINE?

    It is the line the separates the germanic manorial marriage pattern (late marriage, fewer children) from the early marriage cultures.

    WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

    Because the manorial system seems to have increased northern european IQ.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-02-10 10:06:00 UTC

  • Changing Identity: From American to English-American, to Diasporic Englishman

    Sometime within the past six months, I have unconsciously ceased to consider myself an American, and begun to think of myself as an English American – or even just a diasporic Englishman. It wasn’t something I chose. It wasn’t a decision. It was the result of living through these interesting, and increasingly fractious times, while writing on political philosophy. DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE The English population of the States varied from around 50% to around 60% prior to 1800. Over time, due to the immigration needed to fill the Louisiana purchase to keep the west free from another French or English war, then due to the further westward expansion, that number has decreased to about 25% in 1980. And now, it’s declined to something between 9% and 12% — depending upon the various data we refer to. Demographically people of English decent are spread in a band from Maine to Oregon, predominantly along the 40th-46th parallel, with rural northeast, midwest, northern Rocky, and the north west the only places that they are more than 10% of the population.

    (As of 2000AD. We do not have the 2010 data yet.) Interestingly enough, if we look at the UK today, almost all the variation in IQ scores occurs within the ‘middle class’ or what we in the states would call the ‘upper middle class’. It’s dramatic enough that it skews the averages upward. There is a subset of the British people that represent the Northern European version of the Ashkenazim. IMPACT Will the decline of Anglos impact the national culture, or it’s legal system? We know that it takes about 10-15% of the population to hold an idea or value before it becomes part of the culture. It’s Pareto’s principle at work yet again: 1% figure out everything, 5% translate it, 10% prosthelytize it, and the rest follow them. If different groups ally together then ideas can be driven into the society’s norms simply by the process of ideological-flocking. Does that mean that Anglo values will, simply by demographic dilution, decline in influence within those norms? Perhaps, very slowly. It takes about two generations to change basic values, and four for them to fully disappear. And the English Americans aren’t alone. Our cousins the Germans are about equal in percentage and distribution across the country. The Irish and Italians had their impact. And now the Hispanic(Indians) join the Africans. The Asians and Hindus aren’t much of an influence yet. But it’s quite clear that those groups will come to dominate certain social classes and therefore have greater and less likelihood to influence the national culture. And if we look at our history, the Catholics achieved precisely what the protestants warned they would, and the Jews accomplished what the Catholics warned about, and now the Supreme court is a mix of Jewish and catholic, with english and germanic protestants noticeably absent. So significant change can occur in less than a century. Somehow I find that oddly fascinating. But the sentiment of collectivism in the catholics (who represent Europe’s lower classes) and the Jews, as well as that of the hispanics, will certainly express itself in institutional changes, as the germanic protestant culture and it’s calvinist roots are out bred and out immigrated, and those people become a minority. This change from majority to minority is the origin of the Tea Party movement in the states and the BNP-related movements in the UK – white people are acting like a minority, and will soon lose all care and guilt over their advantages, or their colonialist history. THE END OF GUILT But what will change, and is changing rapidly, is the desire for whites, whether protestant or catholic, (or those under the self delusion that they’re neither), to demonstrate that they are acting fairly and justly by granting others special rights as a means of getting over ‘white guilt’. What guilt is a remnant of what one side sees as colonialism, and the other side sees as dragging humanity out of agrarian mysticism, ignorance and poverty. That period of ‘guilt’ is about to come to a permanent end. (( See Paul Gottfried’s work on Guilt. )) The protestants, and then the catholics, will hold no privileged position. No inherited advantage. We’ll want our own protections. And we’ll want revocation of those prior advantages that we gave away. (( Instead of simply systematically invalidating Jim Crowe Laws.)) Colonial guilt is especially vivid in the English. English people were effete, technocratic, and messianic as well as colonialist. And the best technologies that they distributed to those cultures was christianity, accounting, empiricism, medicine, and the common law. They surrendered their colonies fairly easily. And in 500 years they dragged civilization into the modern age – despite the attempts of French intellectuals, and Marxists to fight them off. The most illustrative statement about English ethics is a quote my Mao: “If India had been a French colony, Gandhi never would have been an old man”. And the state of British colonies versus french colonies is all the evidence needed to demonstrate the different cultural virtues. THE TRIBE We’re a tribal people. Brits today are tribal in general. Remarkably so. And classicist as well – which is where the tribalism comes from. The English are already a diasporic people. a minority that was once in control of vast continents. But unlike the other diasporic capitalist peoples: the Jews, Chinese, Hindus and Armenians, we have a deep seated love of the land that is buried in our mythology and our values. Without control of land we are permanently frustrated from expressing our ancient desire to work metal, bend nature, and demonstrate our political devotion and social status, by making the world – every inch of it – a work of art that is left behind us, as a record of our character. RETURN TO TRIBALISM So, my country has left me, and I have left it. The romantic attachment I had to the constitution, the bill of rights, the revolution, its ideology — and my fervent patriotism — left along with it. It’s been a long hard attack on the ‘White Protestant Nation’. But like water on a rock, it’s been successful – unfortunately, almost entirely through the evasion and dilution of the 14th amendment, and the democratization of the Senate. The constitution was an innovation, it was brilliant, but it wasn’t strong enough. The most interesting thing, is that this destruction was done largely by women – initially puritan women – who, in America, liberated by the industrial revolution, then later by the availability of consumer appliances, directed their anger at men, rather than the church — as they did in most countries. (Which is what explains the peculiarly inaffectionate businesslike relationship between men and women in the states, versus other western countries that so many foreigners seem to notice.) THE FORBIDDEN TRIBE Political pressure and rent-seeking from other groups under the ruse of equality — but in reality for the purpose of rent-seeking and access to status and political power — has succeeded in forming a normative and institutional prohibition against our forming a separatist identity as does everyone else. It is entirely acceptable to promote a jewish homeland. It is entirely acceptable to have a jewish defense league, or a La Raza, or a black national movement. Everyone else can be sectarian, but we are forbidden it. In Canada, the lowest caste with the least rights, is white males – by law. In England, bureaucrats starve pensioners but pay the bills of ‘asylum seekers’ — in one of the most perverse incentive schemes ever to create a privileged political class. Now, if a people do not promote their country, their government, their institutions, and their way of life? What do they do? If their history is forbidden to them in their schools? If they are demonize? What do they do? The answer is consistent for all diasporic people: they form a predatory capitalist minority that works within the statute law, but profits from asymmetrical observation of all norms. Norms: habits, manners, ethics, morals — they take care of their own. Just as recent immigrants to the USA go through criminal, small business, and integrated phases. We are members of a forbidden tribe. Our religion is forbidden. Our values are forbidden. Our meritocratic, individualist, aristocratic social system is forbidden. Our history is forbidden. So, how do I feel about being a member of the Forbidden Tribe? I wish Mother England would open her doors to us, so that those of us who are still willing may return home to our live among our own. I am sorry that our ancestors waged a revolution in order to avoid paying for the french and indian war. God Save The Queen. And may God save our English people. (EDIT FOUND THIS) If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!! English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

  • Pravda Rails Against Fox News Without Realizing That They’re Looking In The Mirror.

    Over on Pravda, the popular, nationalistic and jingoistic Russian news agency, Fox News is attacked for it’s nationalist sentiments. I replied:

    Fox news is not exactly a minority business. It’s the most popular cable news channel. A better point of view, would be that Fox caters to the same audience that Pravda does: Nationalists. Just as Russians feel they are a threatened minority, so do white americans. And from that perspective, both the Jingoism of Pravda and Fox news serve the wants of their audiences. FWIW: Americans were against communism, not Russians, or even a Russian empire. And frankly, if Russians would rebuild their empire, if for no other reason than to secure their borders, the world, and the west, would be a better place. However, forming an alliance of any sort that would assist Iran in becoming the core state of islam, by uniting Syra, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan into a military-political block, is not going to help either Russia or the west. Islam is a political system not just a religion, and it is naturally more despotic than even the byzantines.

  • Inverting The Argument: Inequality Is The Product Of Diversity

    Over on Stumbling And Mumbling, Chris Dillow writes about inequality, and refers to OECD Gini-charts on inequality and trust, in an effort to suggest it’s ‘how we believe’ one thing or another that determines redistributive policy. As if conservatives simply need to ‘feel differently’ in order to desire a more egalitarian society. I try to show him that a tolerance for redistribution is a function of cultural homogeneity, and a lack of threats to the status economy. Here is most of Chris’ article:

    My chart shows that the correlation between big government and equality is weak. Yes, countries with big government spending tend to be more equal, but there’s a lot of variation around this. For example, France and Norway have similar levels of equality, but France spends 13 percentage points more of GDP. And the UK has the same inequality as Australia or Japan, but spends 10 percentage points more of GDP.

    In fact, it could be that the positive correlation between equality and public spending doesn’t reflect causality from the latter to the former at all, but rather an omitted variable. Countries that combine big government and equality tend to be high trust societies. It could be, then, that the same high trust that makes people supportive of redistribution – because they believe “welfare scroungers” aren’t ripping them off – also makes them support big government as they trust politicians not to waste money. This possibility hints at another – that perhaps it’s possible to combine small government and equality if the right cultural or institutional factors are in place. I mean, for example: – Strong trades unions. These not only raise the pay of the worst off, but also help restrain top pay. – A collectivist culture. A society that believes that corporate performance depends upon the abilities of all its employees will be more egalitarian than one which believes that organizations can be transformed by star managers. – Education. A highly educated workforce might be more equal, if only because it creates more competition for top jobs. There is a correlation between education levels (pdf) and equality – the egalitarian Nordics do better than the inegalitarian US and latin Americans. And the causality mightn’t be entirely from inequality to poor education. However, high educational standards are achieved not by increased spending, but by a culture which values schooling – and the UK lacks this. Herein, I fear, lies the big challenge for the Left. Although it is technically possible to reconcile small government or fiscal conservatism with greater equality, the UK lacks the cultural underpinnings which would permit this happy combination.

    Despite the fact that for many of us equality of outcome is not a goal, but freedom, the difference between egalitarian and non egalitarian states is, driven by factors in addition to those you mention:

    • Education
    • Status Signals
    • Access to power, Resistance to Changes In power:

    [callout]…small homogenous Protestant countries with high median IQ’s are more distributive than factional, non-protestant countries with lower median IQ’s.[/callout]

    d) Size: it is easier for a small homogenous culture to create an environment that tolerates redistribution. This is the reason for the egalitarianism of the nordic countries. They’re small and homogenous and there are few if any external pressures from ‘unlike’ groups with different cultural and therefore status signals and different “property definitions.” e) Composition: IQ distribution matters. This difference affects the USA, and dramatically effects South America. South america is also highly tribal – as are Brits. The USA is a domestic empire over a set of different cultures consisting of different economic, religious, racial and cultural interests in various compositions, each with different IQ distributions, and this in turn correlates pretty consistently with performance of the groups, which in turn creates competition for status signals, and a desire for access to power in order to expand them, and a counter-desire for people who which to resist that expansion. A number of these factors run counter to the progressive fantasy about the nature of mankind, and individual behavior in society. And failing to include them in your list, is simply a prescription for failing to accomplish your desired state of ‘equality’, by denying the factors that dramatically affect political preferences in redistribution. The lesson to take away from any analysis of the tolerance for redistribution of one’s productive gains (‘equality’), is that **Human beings seek status as much or more than money, and that those who have money will redistribute it to the less advantaged if they perceive that they are not undermining their status as individuals, their status as a cultural class, or their status as a system of cultural manners, ethics and morals.** In other words, if the proletariat has to behave and conform, (which it does in france and doesn’t’ in england or the USA) then people will tolerate redistribution. If the proletariat doesn’t have to behave or conform, then they will resist it. That’s the difference between seeing people as disadvantaged and lazy and incompetent or threatening and destabilizing. *Adherence to norms determines the tolerance for egalitarian sentiments. And cultural diversity reduces tolerance for egalitarian sentiments.* Economists look only at the monetary economy. But the monetary economy is a Maslowian pyramid that exists first to support basic needs, second to provide individuals with the needs for reproduction, and third to provide the needs for status signals – which in turn provides access to mates, and ease of nesting/reproduction. As the economy improves, and the upper classes expand, the status signal economy dominates the monetary economy – ie: the society becomes politicized. The only solution is cultural homogeneity. In other words, there are opposing curves that describe cultural homogeneity and the tolerance for monetary redistribution, which in effect describes the status signal economy. THE DECEPTION CREATED BY THE OECD CHARTS Here are the charts the you’re referring to. And from these charts, we are expected to deduce that ‘high trust societies’ are the most redistributive. However, what these charts actually show, is that small homogenous Protestant countries with high median IQ’s are more redistributive than factional, non-protestant countries with lower median IQ’s.

    All this means is that PEOPLE ARE MORE REDISTRIBUTIVE WHEN THERE ARE FEWER THREATS TO THEIR WAY OF LIFE. And Charles’ argument is just another example, of why any economic argument that mentions the nordics is be definition, false. Curt

  • Emotions Are Universally A Reaction To Changes In Property – An Austrian Criticism Of Immigration

    Karl Smith quotes Eli Dourado

    It is perhaps unsurprising that those who think they benefit from the current system wish to keep it. They trot out all kinds of practical-sounding excuses for why we cannot completely open the border. All of these reasons have analogs in the system of class-based privilege. Most of us, I imagine, would like to think that if we were aristocrats of centuries past, we would see through the lameness of the arguments for using the state to keep down the lower classes. Yet the widespread opposition to open borders today shows that we are not that good.

    Although Dourado repeats the less than novel convenient ‘metaphor’. It could also be restated as: ‘People demonstrably object to the forcible appropriation and transfer of their opportunities, their social status, their political power, their traditions and their culture so that those who have not earned it may profit by redistributing it to others who have also not earned it. People consider these things their property, and they act as if it is their property.” But let’s ask a few questions that the positivist does not ask: Just what is it that creates and maintains the behavior of forgone opportunity costs we call property? The high cost of truth telling? The high cost of non-corruption? Where to ‘incentives’ come from? Why are some organizations of people impervious to all attempts at quelling corruption both public and private? Conservatism is more complicated than Karl or Dourado suggest. Conservatism consists of a series of properties: (a) a general resistance to change in social order: the habits, manners, ethics, morals, and laws by political means. (b) In the USA, it consists of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism, and the Civic Republican sentiments (real or not) and the predominant culture of the prewar era. (c) In the west it consists of the remnants of Fraternal Aristocracy — and all the social habits, myths and values that it entails. Railing against conservatives due to (a) and (a) alone, is a convenient ruse by which opponents ignore and fail to consider the value inherent in (b) and (c), and whether the system of property rights, and requisite costs that individuals must pay to create and maintain those property rights (in both individual an political spectrums) as well as the system of economic calculation, incentives and social status, that are implied in (b) and (c) CAN POSSIBLY be perpetuated WITHOUT (a). Especially given the different time preferences of the social classes. Each of these norms requires individual costs: each of these habits, these cultural forms of ‘capital’ is a cost born by the individuals who adhere to them, day by day, action by action, judgement by judgement. People treat as property that which they pay costs to acquire – even if they are acquiring a ‘norm’. if you take from them that property – even the abstraction of property we call tradition – they will cease paying for it, by abandoning the morals, ethics, manners, habits, and social status – even the very culture and government and nation itself. Because it is no longer an investment for them. Furthermore they will resent the theft of it. In their minds, they have financed a system of meritocratic rotation of elites by serving consumers in the market. Either there is a meritocratic rotation of elites through the service of consumers and society in the market, or there is a dictator who makes a non-meritocratic and arbitrary judgement such that none of us should attempt to meritocratically rotate elites due to service of consumers in the market. It is one or the other. Immigration is incompatible with the welfare state. It explains why small ethnically homogenous states are redistributive and empires are not. Because people PAY for their social status, their culture, their morals, ethics, manners, habits, narratives, and all other friction-reducing behaviors by acting as if they are making purchases. The more diluted the status, the less it is worth. If you steal the status, then people just stop paying for the state. And THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING TODAY. This is an Austrian analysis of human actions. (Versus some silly Rothbardian ideology, or some simplistic overly reductive positivist explanation) It is also Hayek’s criticism of policy. It is a claim against HUBRIS. In particular, an argument against the hubris of positivism. We are markedly different from other civilizations due to the secondary effects that were caused by the need of a technically superior but numerically weak fraternity of independently financed warrior-shareholders (Aristocrats), to hold the numerically and economically superior and totalitarian East at bay. This accidental social order led to the technologies of debate, philosophy, science, and the concepts of balance of power, contract, an independent judiciary, natural rights, personal freedom, political freedom, national freedom, and democratic republicanism – without which the western commercial order, and all that has come from it could not have evolved. And (as Hoppe has tried to illustrate) the behavior of monarchs as intertemporal guardians of property rights has been demonstrably superior to that of democratic socialists. If there is a man alive today that is capable of articulating how we can use a positivist technology to maintain the system of calculation and incentives, and the perpetuate the willingness to pay requisite costs in order to maintain the system of property, manners, ethics, and morals, non-corruption, non-privatization, over four generations of time without these conservative traditions, then I would like to meet him. Because despite a lifetime of attempting to find that some solution to this problem I cannot. Hayek failed, as did Mises and Parsons. Positivism is an insufficient and hubristic technology for a problem we barely comprehend, and the mechanics of which, at least in the aggregate, we are only beginning to discover. Children shouldn’t play with dangerous things.

  • I love Germans. The people. The culture. Everything

    I love Germans. The people. The culture. Everything.

    Source date (UTC): 2011-07-29 19:34:00 UTC

  • Walter Russel Meade Falsely Calls Me A Racist And A Troll

    Comments were shut down on Walther Russell Meade’s site, and they called me a Racist and a Troll. I get called every name in the book. I’m a frequent critic of opposing viewpoints, more than a popularizer of existing libertarian ideas. So I interject opposing viewpoints into all sorts of silly online discussions. And in these interjections I use propertarian analysis rather than so called ‘moral arguments’. This tends to expose arguments for what they really are: forms of theft, or deception. It’s a more complex version of ‘follow the money’. And, I’m not out to avoid offense. Economics and politics are not matters for nicety. They’re too serious. I’m trying to get at the truth. And that’s upsetting to people. Meade invited criticism not just from myself but others, by posting a self=congratulatory article about the anniversary of Mein Kampf and then pandering to conservatives and jews by stating how ostensibly high-minded we have become. This nonsense attracted criticism from a number of us. ( Obviously they don’t get referenced on the Drudge Report or they would have been overwhelmed by comments similar to mine. ) I absolutely despise self congratulatory nonsense that is a cover for transfers of wealth, status and power. And I made it clear I wasn’t alone. After a few back and forth comments, they shut down the comments section and (I think) dropped the article from the site. I can’t find it any longer. LABELS AS A FALURE OF IDEAS Casting labels at people such as ‘racist’ or ‘anti-semitic’ so that you can shut down an argument is a convenient tactic. It’s very convenient. Especially when it’s not true. If I state that men vote conservatively, and woman progressively. Or that women vote heavily on looks rather than policy. Those are true empirical statements. If I argue that jews as a block are predominantly progressive, then that’s simply factual. Here is what they said:

    Writing about race and religion brings out the trolls; Via Meadia‘s normally urbane and civilized comment pages have been invaded recently by two groups of posters. One wants to argue simultaneously that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist and that it is caused by the bad behavior of Jews. The other wants to turn discussions of urban policy into an argument over alleged genetic differences between the races. We have already trashed many of the worst of these comments. Readers can imagine what some of them were like.

    In this sentence, the “group” in question is me.

    One wants to argue simultaneously that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist and that it is caused by the bad behavior of Jews.

    Which is not what I said. I said that:

      That’s What I Said. And it’s true. (See my other articles on the subject.) The tea party is the most obvious evidence that whites are acting as a minority. IRRATIONAL RACISM If someone is biased against a gene pool, that is simply ridiculous behavior. It is irrational to judge an individual by the properties of his or her class. It’s just idiocy. It is not however, irrational to judge a class by the properties of its individuals. That is just rational. Every marketer in the country, and every pollster, does it every single day. RATIONAL STATEMENTS ABOUT RACE To economically disenfranchise people from a market is clearly racism. To criticize their beliefs, particularly if those beliefs are racially motivated, is simply honest discourse. These are just facts that explain behavior. I would argue that white male christians would be very happy if jewish males voted more conservatively. So, I do not see why it’s anti-semitic (racist) to make these observations. It’s just TRUE. And if it were not true then there would be laws protecting the rights of white men, rather than a vast array of laws stacked against them. But there aren’t. And therefore people ACT racially, and the government acts racially. So we cannot both have racial policies and deny they exist. PEOPLE DEMONSTRATE RACIAL PREFERENCES Female dating and marriage preferences demonstrate overwhelming adherence to racial lines. (From large empirical studies of dating sites.) Friendship circles demonstrate a racial preference. Moving and housing patterns reflect dramatic preferences for same race (U-Haul rental patterns). Voting patterns match racial distributions. Work environments demonstrate racial preferences. Race is a motivating factor in associations. Racial issues are common in political discourse. Some races are expressly racist (North Koreans and Jews.) RACE IS A FACTOR IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE Politics is the art and science of obtaining political power for the purpose of obtaining a) rents (see [glossary:rent-seeking] for non economists) b) redistributions, c) privileges (economic opportunities) d) and most importantly, redistributing SOCIAL STATUS. Social status controls access to mates and access to opportunities. People ACT as racial blocks when voting. That’s just data. It is what it is. WHY ARE PEOPLE RACIALLY MOTIVATED? 1) because status signals are superior within racial group than out of group – except under marginal circumstances. That’s the single most important reason why racial groups stick together. 2) And, because human beings do attach a hierarchy to the different races, and to skin color within each race. This is just true. Plain and simple. LIMITS We should not enact policy that does anything other than treat all people equally regardless of race. Furthermore, we should not fear political discourse about races, since people ACT racially. RACIAL PREFERENCES ARE GROUNDS FOR LEGITIMATE CRITICISM It’s the ideas in people’s head’s that’s problematic in political discourse, not their genes. If members of a gene pool demonstrate political preferences, if they form political organizations, if they write, speak and demonstrate their political preferences, and if those preferences are controversial, then it is simply honest to criticize them. It isn’t racism. It’s simply FACT. And in turn if those people hide under the cover of racism, then that’s simply dishonest political discourse. But these [glossary:schumpeterian intellectuals] feel perfectly happy to pat themselves on the head for high mindedness, when it’s really just pandering. As a conservative libertarian I pick away daily at those [glossary:schumpeterian intellectuals] on the web who abuse the sentiments, traditions, ideals motivations of those who would continue to deprive us of our freedom. I criticize the double standard. I am, like many white males, tired of bias against us in news and the courts. I am tired of having my rights taken, rather than rights granted to others. And I am very protective of our freedom. And the most important way of protecting that freedom is to protect the culture and the constitution that promotes it. So if you want to get into name calling as a means of providing yourself with cover by which to attack people with the same values I do, then I’ll be there with a hundred others to refute you. Because that is honest political discourse. Curt

    • When I travel, why do so many people think I am German? I mean, I take it as a c

      When I travel, why do so many people think I am German? I mean, I take it as a compliment. But, I don’t know what cues I’m sending.

      Source date (UTC): 2011-05-31 04:10:00 UTC