Curt Doolittle

Theme: Governance

  • THE ARISTOCRATIC DOCTRINE OF CEO’S “I don’t care who is in charge as long as the

    THE ARISTOCRATIC DOCTRINE OF CEO’S

    “I don’t care who is in charge as long as they’re not even worse at it than I am.”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-11 14:00:00 UTC

  • GEM FROM LOIS MENAND IN THE NEW YORKER “How to Understand Voters”

    http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/30/040830crat_atlargeANOTHER GEM FROM LOIS MENAND IN THE NEW YORKER

    “How to Understand Voters”

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-04 02:51:00 UTC

  • A Definition Of Libertarianism – Draft Two : From Intuitive Sentiment To Institutional Framework

    Libertarianism lih-ber-tair’-ee-un-ih’-zum (noun)1) SENTIMENT: A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above the competing sentiments of care-taking and order — which are the respective priorities of left and right. 2) POLITICAL BIAS: A range of political biases that express the precedence for liberty as the freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore maximizing the self organizing civic virtues and norms. 3) ECONOMIC BIAS: An economic philosophy that seeks to maximize human prosperity by increasing the opportunity for entrepreneurial trial and error by advocating the inviolability of individual property rights, free trade, and sound money. 4) POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: An explicitly articulated political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, where property has been obtained by the processes of homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange, which are necessary for peaceful human cooperation because they facilitate the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we can use to determine our actions. 5) INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK: An framework of political institutions that seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private formal institutions and public informal institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition. libertarian lih-ber-tair’-ee-un An individual who demonstrates a preference for one or more of the definitions of Libertarianism.

  • Trying To Define Libertarianism In One Hundred Words. (And Failing)

    LIBERTARIANISM:1) A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above care-taking and order. 2) A range of political biases that express that precedence as freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore a reliance on the maximization of self organizing civic virtues and norms. 3) An institutional framework that is reliant upon the sole principle of several property that has been obtained by homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange. The result of which maximizes peaceful human cooperation by facilitating the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we use to determine our actions. 4) An explicit political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, and seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition. (138 words)

  • ” … the most improper job of any man, even saints … is bossing other men. No

    ” … the most improper job of any man, even saints … is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity”

    – JRR to Christopher Tolkein

    (Thanks to Skye Stewart for the longer quote.)

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-24 21:21:00 UTC

  • ARE PEOPLE LEAVING CALIFORNIA “The Great California Exodus” 1) Density. People f

    http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_71.htm#.UGD1C_E-us0WHY ARE PEOPLE LEAVING CALIFORNIA

    “The Great California Exodus”

    1) Density. People flee density. Despite the desires of urban planners.

    2) Unemployment. People flee to opportunities.

    3) Uncertainty: The government cannot provide essential services, and tax hikes are imminent.

    They forgot: 4) LA is a few points of pretty amidst a sprawling slum.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-24 20:11:00 UTC

  • LEFT = LAWS : Redistribute income RIGHT = NORMS : Redistribute norms LIBERTARIAN

    LEFT = LAWS : Redistribute income

    RIGHT = NORMS : Redistribute norms

    LIBERTARIAN = PROPERTY : Redistribute liberty

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-24 20:02:00 UTC

  • ON WAR AS ORGANIZED MURDER (A post from elsewhere) It may be true that war is or

    ON WAR AS ORGANIZED MURDER

    (A post from elsewhere)

    It may be true that war is organized murder, But that moral statement must be balanced by the practical recognition that those who are unwilling to engage in war, unprepared for it, and unskilled in it, will rapidly become the subjects of those who are willing, prepared, and skilled at conducting it.

    Certainly the neocon mission has been a failure in muslim lands, for the sole reason that exacting punishment for not controlling one’s citizens is different from the absurd attempt at social conversion of paternalistic tribalism to something like democracy and consumer capitalism.

    Certainly the intervention in Serbia was a mistake. Wars can be waged by urgent violence, tactical trade policy, ideological conversion, and sustained immigration. To limit the appropriation of a people’s life and property to that of violence is a bit of arbitrary and dishonest rhetorical trickery. Conquest by immigration is just as viable as conquest by force. The only difference is the time frame.

    Certainly the US intervention into WW! was a mistake, as was our intervention in the european theater in ww2. The cultural core of Europe was Germany and we broke her will. And along with that will, the long term viability of the high-trust society that is unique to protestant germanic lands and the secret of Germanic resistance to corruption. The rest of Europe is just a cultural province by comparison. And teh german criticism of petty consumerism of anglo society has proven as true as they predicted. It will be two or three generations before she regains her will to act as the core cultural state of western civilization. (Others think it will not recover but I’m less skeptical)

    But I don’t think our interventions that stopped the spread of communism were mistakes. I don’t think McArthur’s desire to topple communist china was a mistake. It would have saved millions of lives, and prevented the upcoming confrontation we will all be faced with.

    And most of all, I don’t respect european pacifism paid for with american blood and treasure. Nor social programs that are subsidized by Americans who pay for European defense, and most importantly, subsidy of stable energy prices. Nor do I respect American pacifism that is mere financial and personal convenience masquerading as conviction.

    There is a vast difference between war, nation building, police action, and empire building. Only war is necessary. Nation building, police action and empire building are just thefts by way of murder.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-23 14:08:00 UTC

  • FROM A POST ON QUORA – THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAJORITY RULE OVER HETEROGENEOUS VAL

    FROM A POST ON QUORA – THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAJORITY RULE OVER HETEROGENEOUS VALUE SYSTEMS

    Small homogenous cultures tend to be redistributive. One of the sillly myths, is that 350M americans of various value systems can be governed as are 10M northern european protestant germanics. Majority rule assists us in selecting fiscal priorities when our interests and values are the same. But as the values of a country become heterogeneous through immigration, or the breakdown of the nuclear family that allows women to return to their communal state of bearing children but asking others to pay for them, we render majority rule impossible. Because now we are not selecting priorities for the use of scarce resources, and generating laws to prevent privatization of those investment ‘commons’, but we are instead, generating laws to advance one system of moral codes at the expense of another, and using money from one group to achieve what is amoral to them. This is why democratic government is limited to homogenous cultural entities. And why the market serves us across heterogeneous entities. Our institutions of majority rule are not competent to solve this problem of heterogeneous values.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-22 13:11:00 UTC

  • I LOVE LIBERTARIANS Really. I mean. They’re interesting. And they aren’t interes

    I LOVE LIBERTARIANS

    Really. I mean. They’re interesting. And they aren’t interesting at someone else’s expense.

    Libertarians and progressives are closer than libertarians and conservatives. Both are more attracted to new experiences. But libertarians desire experiences that they can create voluntarily. Liberals desire experiences whether obtained voluntarily or not. The difference between these world views is caused by the difference in false consensus bias. Libertarians don’t make that error. Progressives are defined by it.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-19 15:26:00 UTC