Curt Doolittle

Theme: Governance

  • THE NAP IS INSUFFICIENT FOR SUPPRESSION OF DEMAND FOR THE STATE. IN FACT, THE NA

    THE NAP IS INSUFFICIENT FOR SUPPRESSION OF DEMAND FOR THE STATE. IN FACT, THE NAP IS “UNETHICAL” BY DEFINITION

    (I wanted to thank Jason Maher for very intelligent comments. But also to respond to criticisms, and perhaps to fill a few gaps.)

    This post is part of a discussion on Argumentation Ethics.

    1) In that thread, my purpose was to illustrate that neither AE, nor performative contradiction, are causal arguments. However, since both correctly assume self ownership is a necessity, then that the single assumption is sufficient to deduce all of the institutional solutions that Hoppe addressed in his work. It’s weak causal argumentative support, but it demonstrates internal consistency. And, in both logic and mathematics, whenever we construct a proof, we require internal consistency. Internal consistency does not determine external correspondence. And external correspondence is the only test of ‘truth’. But his arguments are internally consistent, and that’s something that doesn’t happen very often in ethics.

    2) The rest of my post (and most of my work) is designed to articulate the universally DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS demonstrated by man, and to argue how, given such a descriptive ethics, liberty can be achieved as a system of NORMATIVE ETHICS.

    3) The reason this construction is necessary is to correct the FAILURE of libertarian arguments to gain political support – or even to constrain the state. Or more simply: if we have better rational and economic arguments, then why do conservatives succeed in resisting the state, but libertarians fail to resist the state?

    The answer is that humans vote and act, morally, not rationally. (And it’s necessary for them to do so for many reasons, not the least of which is limited cognitive ability in real time, combined with fragmentary knowledge and living in an environment surrounded by others who are engaged in limited theft and violence, but pervasive deception, fraud, obscurantism, free riding, rent seeking and conspiracy.

    So the purpose of my work is to attempt to correct libertarian ethics such that the failed effort to gain popular support can either be corrected by improvements to libertarian ethics such that they are preferable to a political majority, or to alter the libertarian strategy such that we abandon both the attempt to obtain a political majority (or even an effective resistance), and attempt a separate solution.

    The various means which I’ve attempted to suggest are too long for this forum.

    NOW, TO JASON’S INSIGHTFUL COMMENTS

    –“An interesting conceptual division of methods to nick what belongs to someone else. Mr. Doolittle’s principle argument is the the Non Aggression Principle can only deal with #1 and part of #4, but is completely powerless against #2 and #3. Specifically, he speaks of the NAP lacking a mechanism for dealing with classes 2 and 3, and even encourages them…”–

    You are correct. Yes.

    –“”Private property is contrary [to] the female reproductive strategy””–

    This fact may seem humorous to you but the consequences explain why the introduction of women into the voting pool has driven us consistently toward a redistributive society, despite the fact that none of such would have occurred without the introduction of women in the voting pool. (I can’t vouch for Australia because I don’t know the data, But it’s true in the states and Canada. In Canada, without the French vote, the mix would be as conservative as the united states. Which is why conservative Canadians want Quebec to secede.)

    The female reproductive strategy is not monogamous, but polyamorous for support and protection, but to capture the better genes she can run across from those multiple encounters. And then to retain the burden of care, but to place the burden of upkeep on the tribe.

    Wherever monogamous marriage (the nuclear family, or the northern european absolute nuclear family) declines women return to this strategy via proxy of the state.

    Property rights that accompanied animal husbandry and agrarian settlement, inverted matrilineal reproductive control, and placed reproductive control in the hands of males – something the marxists have argued against since Engels wrote his tome on it.

    I can go into this at depth but lets just say that the evidence is that women cause the change in property rights policy and that they demonstrate a return to community property in their voting patterns.

    –“NAP covers externalities easily… complete allocation of private property rights to avoid “tragedy of the commons” and then allowing people to sue for damage to their property.”–

    –“NAP covers fraud too since it is basically theft through breach of contract.”–

    –“NAP doesn’t cover asymmetric information to the degree that it simply means two different people have different information. But having different information isn’t a property rights violation and is simply the state of nature. It is impossible and absurd to talk about all people in the world having identical information.”–

    Individual contracts place an extremely high transaction cost on all exchanges. So if you are one of the owners of an enormous shopping mall, and you rent space for stores to merchants, and you want to maximize your revenue, will you, or will you not, want to decrease transaction costs?

    People are entirely cognizant of transaction costs. The high trust society eliminates them, by a normative prohibition on all involuntary transfers, not just those transfers that constitute aggression.

    Further, no society exists that has property rights and liberty as we know it EXCEPT where there has been a near prohibition on all involuntary transfers – because it is the only way to reduce demand for the state: demand for the mall owners so to speak, to reduce transaction costs.

    We must remember that for humans, loss aversion, and altruistic punishment are MORE ACTIVATING (we are more passionate about them) than self interest. So all our decisions are asymmetrically weighted against risk.

    So the libertarian errors are those of incorrect attribution of praxeological analysis to transactions. And the reason for that praxeological error is that mises and rothbard both made the error of using commodity purchases and ordinal preferences, where commodity purchases are marginally indifferent except on price, and where human differences are not ordinal but a network, and where that network demonstrates necessary biases against risk and necessary cooperative biases that punish offenders>

    Think of it this way. If we did not operate by such rules, then transaction costs would be infinite, and we would not exist.

    It is not possible for humans to function without these prohibitions.

    It is non logical for libertarians to rely on the NAP, which structurally contains errors that are impossible for humans to cooperate using.

    I am aware that it is quite unlikely that you will, at first reading, drop your high investment in rothbardian and misesian logic. And I suspect that this one argument is insufficient to convince you. But you will have a very hard time both rationally and empirically circumventing that logic.

    So it is not that I err, or fail to grasp, or have not made sufficient efforts in this area of inquiry. It is that I am not trying to JUSTIFY liberty, but instead am trying to explain how to obtain it as a preference, because it is not justifiable. and it is not justifiable because while liberty is in our reproductive interests. It is not in the reproductive interests of all. Or even the majority.

    —“And perhaps more importantly, the NAP is not the only basis for anarchy. David Friedman is one of the most famous living anarchists and he (and I) argue based on consequences, not NAP.”—

    Well, I never made that statement. I’m making the statement that NAP is insufficient for DESCRIBING what people do. And that the weakness of the NAP explains why we fail to understand why even those people who prefer government out of their lives, demonstrate a demand for government under conditions that the NAP prescribes.

    The NAP only prohibits crime. It does not prohibit unethical or immoral conduct. To obtain voluntary participation you must forbid both unethical and immoral conduct, otherwise individuals will demand intervention to prohibit it. By having the state, a population trades free riding, theft, unethical and immoral conduct that they cannot avoid for rent seeking and corruption that they can avoid. You cannot eliminate rent seeking and corruption via the state without also retaining the prohibition on unethical and immoral actions suppressed by the state.

    Its non logical.

    I am trying to reform libertarianism to repair the errors in Rothbardian ethics in order to explain why we lose. And the NAP is one of the reasons that we lose: because it prohibits criminality but not unethical or immoral behavior.

    And if the NAP fails to prohibit unethical and immoral behavior, and If we claim to have a lock on ethics, then what is the basis for that claim?

    If we have a lock on ethics, then why do we fail? Are humans naturally unethical? That would mean that natural law was a false basis for liberty.

    This is because aggression is not the test of the ethics of property. It is only the test of criminality. Ethical constraint and moral constraint are place higher demands on property rights.

    Blackmail, as Rothbard argues, is not a violation of the NAP. It is a voluntary exchange. What is it about blackmail that we can say is moral or ethical?

    It should be clear at this point that the NAP is not a test of ethical or moral behavior, but only of criminal behavior.

    THE NAP IS LESS OF A REASON FOR A VOLUNTARY SOCIETY

    The NAP is LESS of a reason to prefer a voluntary society if we merely exchange free riding, rent seeking and corruption via the state, which we can both avoid and which we rarely experience, for unethical and immoral behavior which is pervasive in society, and we cannot avoid or fail to experience.

    Praxeology demands that we attribute rational choice to individuals. It’s non-praxeological to assert that the exchange of pervasive and daily thefts is preferable to infrequent and invisible thefts. If only for the transaction costs to each of us.

    So no, the NAP is LESS of a reason to prefer a voluntary society. People see the state, rationally, as the lesser evil between pervasive criminality, unethical behavior, and immoral behavior. They willingly trade rent seeking and corruption that they cannot see for criminality, unethical, and immoral behavior. And they are rightly rational to do so.

    So what is the means by which we eliminate the state’s free riding, rent seeking and corruption, while also prohibiting the criminal, unethical, and immoral? What is the basis for property rights if we must prohibit the criminal, unethical, immoral, AND the CORRUPT?

    NAP does not tell us this. Our reliance on the argumentative value of the NAP is the reason we fail. The NAP is in fact a RECIPE FOR FAILURE, because it is an unethical and immoral standard for the construction of property rights, norms and the common law.

    THE NAP IS ONE OF THE REAONS WE FAIL.

    Without prior promise of constraint of blackmail, we cannot reduce demand for the state. Private Property only developed where unethical and immoral conduct was suppressed at every possible level.

    The EVIDENCE is that the demand for private property only exists in the suppression of immoral and unethical conduct. Criminality is insufficient. So it’s not RATIONAL to argue that the NAP is sufficient. The trust necessary for private property must exist PRIOR to the demand for private property, and the reduction of demand for the state. Further, it’s not evident (it’s contrary to the evidence) that the market suppresses unethical and immoral behavior. Just the opposite. The expansion of the market INCREASES opportunity for immoral and unethical behavior. Immoral and unethical behavior is cheaper than honest ethical and moral behavior, which imposes costs on the participants. Property rights are a cost. Every time they are respected. Forgoing those opportunities requires trust. The result of forgoing opportunities and TRUST creates property rights. Not the other way around. Private property does not create trust. Once you suppress criminal, unethical and immoral behavior, the only POSSIBLE means of interaction is via private property.

    We cannot confuse cause and consequence.

    TRUST FIRST. PROPERTY SECOND. STATE LAST.

    So, again, trust (willingness to take risks / low transaction cost exchange) requires the suppression of criminal, unethical and immoral behavior. And the trust that appears to be sufficient for demand for private property requires near total suppression of unethical behavior.

    We must suppress even MORE unethical and rent seeking and corrupt behavior in order to reduce demand for the state. If we are to define property rights as the basis of a moral and peaceful society, then what is the definition of property rights that prohibits not only criminal behavior (the NAP) but also unethical, immoral, as well as free riding, rent seeking, and corruption?

    I think that it looks like the state would be the natural means of transforming criminal, unethical, immoral behavior into free riding, rent seeking and corruption in an effort to decrease transaction costs. Now, how do we FURTHER suppress free riding, rent seeking and corruption without the state? Privatization. But for privatization we must have a set of property rights that increase suppression of free riding, rent seeking and corruption, without sacrificing the reason for the state: suppression of unethical and immoral behavior.

    It’s non logical to ask people to yet bear again that which they have rid themselves of, by clear and demonstrated preference, almost universally. People have already demonstrated that they are willing to trade unethical and immoral behavior, for corrupt and rent seeking behavior. And they were rational to do so. You cannot tell them that they are gaining something by simply reverting them to a previous state that they have already rejected.

    We can only offer them something BETTER. Which is to ALSO prohibit rent seeking and corruption AS WELL as unethical and immoral behavior.

    So no. The NAP was a terrible mistake for the liberty movement. It was tragic. I understand why they resorted to ghetto ethics, because they didn’t understand where liberty and the high trust society came from.

    But now that we do (or at least I do) we must base any argument that we deem ethically superior on a set of property rights that is a net gain, not a net loss, for the population.

    This is very difficult for Rothbardians to swallow, but pride and personal investment in a failed ideology are less important than the achievement of freedom.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-20 07:38:00 UTC

  • LUXURY VERSUS NECESSITY IN ETHICS : PARLOR GAMES VS POLITICS The difference betw

    LUXURY VERSUS NECESSITY IN ETHICS : PARLOR GAMES VS POLITICS

    The difference between the structure of my arguments, and the more common of those in moral philosophy, is one that is common in western philosophy. Because western philosophy was created and developed by its aristocratic classes, and those classes that performed sufficiently to afford the luxury of philosophy, and sought enfranchisement.

    Namely: necessity.

    Marx, for all his error, does not make this mistake, nor does perhaps our most influential moral philosopher: Adam Smith against whom Marx, like Freud against Nietzsche, Marx is a reactionary.

    So, the difference in our approaches to philosophy, is that I start with necessity, and then choose preference from the available options.

    From that position I take the mutually moral and scientific requirements that (a) it is only moral to compel necessities not preferences. (b) the only moral preferential political action is one that others voluntarily comply with. (c) the evidence is that most of our attempts to interfere with social orders, other than increasing participation in them, has proven to be a failure when we attempt to achieve ends, rather than provide means.

    There are many preferences that we could seek to pursue, the externalities of which are counter productive to the prosperity that decreases the possibility of choices.

    As such, philosophical discourse on luxuries is interesting. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that what we are discussing is the luxuries that our implementation of necessities has made possible.

    Discussing luxuries is a nice parlor game. It is like young men fantasizing about which supercar they can buy if they save for the next ten years. But I do not work on philosophy for entertainment. I work on it for the purpose of identifying possible solutions to looming problems: what is necessary for continued expansion of our ability to cooperate in a division of knowledge and labor so vast that we can exist with such wealth?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-19 08:54:00 UTC

  • MURDEROUS US GOVERNMENT

    http://blog.independent.org/2014/01/14/license-to-kill/THE MURDEROUS US GOVERNMENT

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-14 16:56:00 UTC

  • LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY Kill bad ideas. Define good ideas. 1 – The Libertarian Sp

    LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY

    Kill bad ideas. Define good ideas.

    1 – The Libertarian Spectrum of Arguments (justifications)

    2 – Rebranding Liberty by Defining Liberty Correctly

    3 – From the low trust private property ethics of the ghetto, to the high trust private property ethics of the aristocratic egalitarians.

    4 – Closing: High Trust Has The Numbers to Win

    1- THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM OF “JUSTIFICATION”

    ——————————————–

    THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM BY ABILITY TO CONDUCT AN ARGUMENT

    In order of the required depth of understanding. Libertarianism can refer to:

    1) A sentiment (a intuitive bias for liberty above all other moral intuitions).

    2) A moral conviction that liberty produces material and consequently emotional ‘goods’.

    3) A political preference for limited government.

    4) A specific institutional model called classical liberal, which additionally requires, that transactions may not cause externalities (external involuntary transfers), and that norms and the commons are forms of property we must pay for through forgone opportunities for self gratification.

    5) A political preference for particular choice of political model, such as Classical Liberalism, Small Government, Private government, Anarcho Capitalism, or a distribution of small states with varied sets of political preferences.

    6) A specific and rigid philosophical doctrine that states that all exchanges must be voluntary and devoid of fraud theft or violence – which is a lower standard of moral requirement than the classical liberal (and the reason why rothbardian libertarianism failed.)

    ANARCHO CAPTIALISM (‘ghetto ethics’)

    Anarcho Capitalist Libertarianism is, at least as argued by Rothbard and Hoppe, aside from Marxism, the most analytically rigorous political theory that exists. Unfortunately it contains insufficient moral constraints to obtain the approval of the classical liberal majority, and therefore political power.

    PROPERTARIANISM (Aristocratic Egalitarian ethics)

    Propertarianism enumerates all high trust private property rights and therefore reflects the classical liberal, aristocratic egalitarian, ethics of the high trust society.

    LIBERTY IS GRASPED BY THE MENTAL ABILITY AND DEVOTION OF THE BEHOLDER, EACH OF WHOM VARIES CONSIDERABLY IN ABILTY AND DESIRE – AND AS SUCH LIBERTY CAN EXIST AS A BIAS in a number of forms. (Emotional and sentimental, Moral, Preferential, Institutional, and rigidly analytical)

    Narrow camp libertarianism is ineffective. The tent must be big, because the distribution of ability and desire is widely distributed.

    2 – REBRANDING LIBERTY BY DEFINING LIBERTY CORRECTLY

    ————————

    BRANDS FUNCTION AS MEMES THAT CONNECT SYMBOLS WITH EMOTIONAL REACTIONS

    Unfortunately, “Brands” (ideological memes) are produced at very high cost. Because of that high cost, it’s no wonder we fight over them rather than try to introduce new ‘brands’ into the ideological marketplace.

    ROTHBARD RUINED LIBERTY FOR A GENERATION

    Rothbard ruined liberty for a generation in a failed attempt at creating a pseudoscientific justification for an arguably immoral moral code, that preserved ‘cheating’ under the assumption that the market would cure it. (Against the evidence.)

    REBRANDING

    But, by killing that idea, what remains is probably enough to build upon. At least, that is my approach to the problem. (And it’s working) And that will not require the development of a new brand. Just rebranding of the old. And the entrenched commitment everyone has already made to it.

    So, the other strategy, and the more economical one, is to kill the sub brand, to preserve the brand.

    PETER’S WORK ON AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS AS AN EXAMPLE

    I’m sure Peter’s at least partly aware that his definition of Austrian Economics emerged as the defining description for the internet generation. (although I think we could improve it further with a little work). He redefined it by defining it. (The BHL’s are failing because they have nothing to define.) So Peter is the poster child for demonstrating that it is possible to alter the course of a meme if one does so with a narrow enough argument.

    3 – FROM THE LOW TRUST NAP, TO THE HIGH TRUST PROHIBITION ON DISCOUNTS (‘CHEATING’)

    ———————————————-

    HE NAP IS A TEST, NOT A DEFINITION

    “Strict commitment to the NAP is not a necessary requirement of libertarianism” – Matt Zwolinski

    THE ORIGINS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY, LOW TRUST AND HIGH TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY.

    The source of private property as we know was the organize application of violence to suppress nearly every form of possible discount OTHER than market competition, among an outbred and closely related homogenous population. That North Sea people had a bias toward higher trust is something we can document. That manorialism required husband and wife ‘teams’ in order to obtain land to work, extended this trust. That the church exacerbated this bias by prohibiting inbreeding out to as many as eight generations, and granted women property rights, further fractured the extended family and forced extended trust.

    This institution of High-Trust Private Property was unique for unique reasons, and probably cannot be repeated easily. But it was not a natural development or it would have occurred somewhere else other than above the Hanjal line.

    NAP AND LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY

    The NAP is a BAD TEST because it is ONLY a test of LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY. It is a very visible test suitable for a diverse population with diverse sets of family structures and property rights because of those family structures.

    However, the NAP is a BAD TEST because it does not suppress anywhere NEAR the discounts (thefts and cheating) that the high trust society prohibits by requiring WARRANTY against asymmetry of information; and grants 100% legal ‘standing’ to prohibit all involuntary discounts (thefts) via externality.

    So NAP is a MINIMUM PRIMITIVE TEST of LOW TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY, but it is not sufficient to test high trust private property that prohibits every form of ‘cheating’ EXCEPT improvement in production and distribution of goods and services.

    HIGH TRUST PRIVATE PROPERTY

    To create a hight trust society with trust-frictionless trade, one must not only suppress aggression, but all forms of discounts – entirely. This is what the north sea people (or at least the English) managed to do. Largely preserving the in-group behavior of the Friesians, Saxons and Jutes.

    SO NO ,THE NAP IS NOT THE PRESCRIPTION FOR LIBERTY…BUT THIS SET OF RULES IS:

    The prescription for HIGH TRUST LIBERTY, and HIGHT TRUST PROPERTY RIGHTS, requires the following:

    (a) First Use + Monopoly of Use

    (b) Non Aggression (prohibition on theft and violence)

    (c) Warrantee against asymmetry of information

    (d) Universal ‘standing’ against externalization

    (e) Calculability And Prohibition on Pooling and Laundering – (which is too complex to go into here. But effectively would prohibit government from laundering the relationship between the source of funds and the use of funds, and terminate the discretionary use of funds, as do shareholder agreements.)

    (f) Respect for norms: norms require costs paid into the ‘commons’ in the form of forgone opportunities, and as such norms are themselves a shareholder asset (of the commons).

    (g) Right of Ostracization (boycott) against those who fail to respect these ethics in their entirety.

    This set of rules constitutes a prohibition on involuntary transfers. What remains is only the competition in the market for the value one adds to goods and services, and a total prohibition on any form of free riding (cheating) whatsoever.

    THE SPECTRUM OF ‘CHEATING’

    Which of these actions would NAP prohibit and which would NAP NOT prohibit?

    –CRIME–

    Murder

    Violence

    Theft

    –ETHICS–

    Blackmail

    Usury

    Fraud

    Fraud by omission

    Fraud by obfuscation

    –MORALITY—

    Profit without contribution

    Profiting from disadvantage

    Profiting from suffering

    Profit from Interference in the acts of others

    Libel, Slander and Defamation

    Externalization of costs

    Privatization of the commons

    Socialization of losses into the commons

    Free riding

    –POLITICAL MORALITY–

    Rent seeking

    Corruption

    Extortion

    Conspiracy

    Monopoly (government is technically a monopoly)

    –CONQUEST–

    Ostracization and Displacement

    Conquest through Overbreeding

    Conquest through Immigration

    Conquest through religious conversion

    Conquest through Enslavement

    Conquest through war.

    Human cooperation requires both the incentive to cooperate AND a prohibition on free riding (“cheating”)

    The high trust ethical system of the northern europeans requires the organized use of violence to suppress all cheating and to require truth and value-added action as the only means of obtaining profit.

    4 – CLOSING – THIS IS THE ANSWER

    Humans intuit their morality they do not choose it. The majority of Americans still intuit the morality of the absolute nuclear family, or at least the Nuclear family, because it was a natural consequence of immigrating to America. As well as a status symbol.

    This ethic has rapidly changed as single motherhood has approached the majority proposition.

    However, levying criticisms and altruistic punishment for failing to demonstrate compassion at the margins is answerable by the destruction of trust and the restoration of free riding in a polity. Progressivism isn’t progressive. It’s REGRESSIVE.

    So, we still have the NUMBERS to make use of, and certainly the wealth, if we give people a rhetorical model that gives voice to their intuitional moral code. Autistic libertarians do not have the numbers. But classical liberals and traditionalists do.

    Furthermore this model helps correct the conservative arguments which are purely allegorical and intuitive, because it allows us to use rational language to alter conservative beliefs that are irrelevant (homosexuality is not a choice but an in-utero stress) and defend those that do make sense (norms are property and the high trust society is not possible without it because we cannot possess sufficient commonality of reproductive interest – particularly with single parent homes.

    This is a loose answer to our ‘Libertarian Philosophy’ problem. It’s an historical, and empirical not preferential argument.

    The problem is that since it arose under subsistence agrarianism, it presumes near equality of productivity except for one’s moral actions. But we now live in a world where ability is also diverse. So that means that suppression of ‘cheating’ is a disadvantage to those who cannot compete, not just those who are un-WILLING to compete.

    The benefit of the meritocratic system is that it accelerates reproduction of the upper classes and suppresses reproduction of the lower (which is impolitic). So the only logical solution is to redistribute to those unproductive but conforming people who do control their breeding and to ‘punish’ those unproductive people who do not control their breeding.

    This problem is in part solved by a substantial minimum income redistribution, and withdrawing it if one has more than one child, or fails to cohabitate (regardless of with whom) in order to support one’s child.

    That is the only solution I’m able to come up with that has a logical basis to it.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-10 08:30:00 UTC

  • “political ideologies in the modern age are projections of a people’s unconsciou

    “political ideologies in the modern age are projections of a people’s unconscious premodern family values.” – from Todd.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-09 13:01:00 UTC

  • “Family structure + literacy + godlessness = political ideology” – emmanuel todd

    “Family structure + literacy + godlessness = political ideology”

    – emmanuel todd.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-09 13:00:00 UTC

  • “Since the early 1980s, the American extreme right has evolved from a movement c

    “Since the early 1980s, the American extreme right has evolved from a movement characterized by ultra patriotism, to one increasingly characterized by nihilism.”

    Well. That’s true. I was there. We knew we couldn’t win. We chose to bankrupt the state by all means possible, before it destroyed us. And, had immigration not been so extensive, the strategy would have worked. But between minorities, immigrants and single mothers conservatives couldn’t to it. Not possible. By 92 it was impossible. That was probably the end.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-08 16:41:00 UTC

  • VS ADELSON The future of gambling under siege by special interests?

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/01/06/the-biggest-bet-ever/SOROS VS ADELSON

    The future of gambling under siege by special interests?

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-08 06:31:00 UTC

  • NECESSARY, PREFERENTIAL AND LUXURY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT A) NECESSARY PROPERT

    NECESSARY, PREFERENTIAL AND LUXURY PROPERTIES OF GOVERNMENT

    A) NECESSARY PROPERTIES

    The NECESSARY properties of of a government are

    1) provide a means of resolving differences without the use of violence (ie: to create a monopoly of violence within a geography.)

    2) To provide a means of resolving differences requires a definition of property rights.

    3) To prohibit alternative definitions of property rights from being imposed by force, theft or fraud, (or immigration.)

    These are the minimum properties of a government.

    B ) ADVANTAGEOUS PROPERTIES

    In addition to these properties, it may also be possible for a group of people to afford to also have government engage in the following:

    4) To provide a means of investing in commons (human and physical infrastructure) by prohibiting free-riding, privatization, and competition when investing in commons.

    5) To provide a means of cooperation between classes where privatization, free riding, rent seeking and competition prevent cooperation between classes.

    6) To reduce both transaction costs and fraud by implementing weights, measures and currency.

    7) To perform as an insurer of last resort against catastrophes.

    These are advantageous properties of government.

    C) PROPERTIES THAT ARE LUXURIES

    In addition to these properties, it may be possible for a group of people to afford to also have the government engage in the following LUXURIES:

    8 ) Redistribution of all kinds, both in services, and in direct payments.

    9) Inter-temporal redistribution from young to old, rather than saving and lending from old to young. (But this is very fragile.)

    These are LUXURIES that can be provided by some governments under rare circumstances in exceptional periods of time, where malthusian and group selection problems have been temporarily held at bay by technological innovation.

    The government is not the source of the ‘good things’. The courts, under the common law and property rights is the source of ‘good things’.

    The government we have today, has destroyed the common law, the rule of law, and created both corporatism and socialism. And we now suffer between two factions that try to control the government for corporatist or socialist means.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 13:43:00 UTC

  • THE ASSUMPTIONS OF ‘LIBERALISM’ (AND LIBERTARIANISM) “Libertarianism is applied

    THE ASSUMPTIONS OF ‘LIBERALISM’ (AND LIBERTARIANISM)

    “Libertarianism is applied autism.” – Steve Sailer

    For some reason this phrase affected me pretty deeply.

    UNIVERSAL ENFRANCHISEMENT A GIVEN?

    Libertarianism, as I practice it, and as I believe Mises and Hayek practiced their ‘liberalism’ (universal enfranchisement), is the scientific pursuit of political theory using the system of measurement we call economics, and the objective of material prosperity. Which was of course, the great achievement of the innovations of capitalism, empiricism (of which capitalism is a member) and the harnessing fossil fuels.

    Or rather, These philosophers were engaged in an attempt to define scientific political theory under the ASSUMPTION of universal enfranchisement.

    I still practice my philosophical inquiry under that same assumption of universal enfranchisement – the prohibition on the deprivation of the choice of “cooperation or boycott” from others.

    But once you assume some justification for not depriving others of choice, (a) we run into the problem of diverse interests and desires so that we now need a means of choosing between preferences, and the DEMONSTRATED preference of everyone is greater prosperity, for the simple reason that prosperity increases everyone’s choices and greatly reduces the cost of ANY choice.

    PRIMACY OF PROSPERITY – ECONOMICS AND COOPERATION

    So, the second assumption of “liberalism” is the priority of economic good. That is, that cooperation facilitates production of prosperity.

    MERITOCRACY OR NOT?

    The third assumption of “liberalism” is natural rotation (Meritocracy). But like prices and contracts, humans do not willingly rotate downward if there is any impact upon their status. In fact, people place higher value on their status than almost any other asset that they have.

    LIBERTY OR CONSUMPTION?

    The fourth assumption of ‘liberalism’ is that humans desire liberty, rather than that they desire choice and consumption. When in fact, only libertarians and conservatives demonstrate a preference for liberty, and almost all other humans on the planet do not. They demonstrate ONLY a preference for consumption.

    OTHER ALTERNATIVES TO LIBERTARIANISM EXIST

    0) Libertarianism (full enfranchisement, with meritocratic rotation)

    1) Select enfranchisement (Pre-enlightenment European, and early American with selective rotation)

    2) Totalitarian humanism (Chinese Corporatism and European Corporatist models ceremonial enfranchisement )

    3) Totalitarianism (pre-communist Chinese and most empire and state models)

    Libertarians are unique. Conservatives are unique. Most of the world does not want to engage in trial and error. They can’t. It’s too hard for them.

    Then again, why does universal enfranchisement imply monopoly?

    Why can’t we construct many small states some of which practice communal property and others that practice private property and everything in between? Because the statists could not profit from us?

    Because that is how humans MUST function precisely because we are not equal in ability whatsoever.

    A large organization has only so many people at the top. In many small organizations there are only so may people at the top, but there are many more organizations for people to reach the top of.

    Just as companies and economies have spread out into multiple flexible organizations, so must governments.

    That is the obvious conclusion: size allows you to conduct war and that is all. As such, if someone attempts to construct a scale empire, they have no other reason than warfare to do so.

    Our goal then should be to destroy large states so that war is nearly impossible to conduct.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-07 10:33:00 UTC