Curt Doolittle

Theme: Governance

  • Why Do People Who Never Read James Madison Or Edmund Burke, But Listen To Hannity Or Limbaugh Think Of Themselves As Conservative?

    Conservatism is a sentiment. It has biological, environmental, pedagogical and rational components that reinforce it. Classical liberalism is a political philosophy.  Conservatives in the USA are conservative TOWARD classical liberalism. Christian Aristocratic Manorialism is a social model.  Conservatives are conservative TOWARD Christian Aristocratic Manorialism.  One does not need to read anything.  In fact, having to ‘read’ something is a decidedly negative property of any social model. It must be capable of propagation by experience, and in particular, the experience of a child.

    All rational models seek to advocate in favor of the sentiment.  Not the other way around.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-who-never-read-James-Madison-or-Edmund-Burke-but-listen-to-Hannity-or-Limbaugh-think-of-themselves-as-conservative

  • What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Different Philosophies Of Economics?

    You listed political philosophies but not economic philosophies.  They are two sets of questions.

    1) Political philosophies consider three different questions:
    a) How is the institution of property constructed (is property owned by individuals, the collective, an institution, or an authoritarian figure, and what are the limits on the use of that property)
    b) what institution is used to determine the use of property (the market, heads of families, bureaucracy, or a dictator)
    c) what claims do citizens (shareholders) have on the results of production or the profits from exchange. (Which are technically the same thing.)
    Everything else is trappings.  We know that incentives and the ability to calculate and plan determine the rate of innovation and effort put into work.  So the more individual property rights are, the more consumption is possible at the lowest cost.

    2) Economic philosophies fall into temporal categories from the short term to the long term, and advocates differer not so much on the utility of any given tactic, but on their approval or disapproval of the externalities (secondary consequences) of using the tactic. Economists then, tend to ally with political philosophies based upon those SECONDARY outcomes.

    These outcomes are driven by ‘fears’.  The liberal fears that the poor or less able will experience discomfort.  The conservative fears that society will be made fragile and uncompetitive.  If we work very hard and save then society will become hierarchical but safe.  If we redistribute and only a few work hard then society will have less discomfort but more fragility.  At least, that’s the theory. The left tolerates fragility and the right tolerates discomfort. It really boils down to that simple a difference.

    What economists do agree upon is that stimulating demand (consumption) stimulates the economy and does it quickly.  What they disagree upon is the good or bad consequences that come from stimulating the economy. The different economic strategies insert money into the economy in a range from very short to very long time frames.

    And the political ideologies are biased toward these two time frames: conservative the long term and liberal the short term.  In effect, the left wants the most redistribution possible right away in order to diminish the stress of the natural difference between teh classes, and think incentives are a means of coercion, and the right wants a meritocratic society where people have an incentive to be productive. (These are simply expressions of the feminine and masculine reproductive strategies. Nothing more.) 

    The different economic tactics below are organized from short term (liberal) to long term (conservative).  Economists tend to fall into camps that PREFER one or more of the tactics. 

    The Economic Tactics:
    a) Modern Monetarists (MMT): when necessary, just give money directly to people in order to stimulate consumption.  MMT is a counter intuitive theory that is widely disputed.  But the idea that we should be able to bypass the financial sector and directly credit consumer bank accounts is not a bad one. The data shows that tax incentives are not useful in the short term. (I was one of the people advocating that we just pay down consumer mortgages by 200K – it would be cheaper than letting the world economy collapse for a decade. Galbraith recommended the same thing before he died. And he and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.)   The counter arguments are that there isn’t any way to do this today, and it’s pretty hard to not create a moral hazard, and it’s pretty hard to be equitable, because you’re effectively rewarding people who used bad judgement.  FAVORED BY THE RADICAL LEFT

    b) Monetary Policy: when necessary, reduce the cost of credit (interest rates) so that people are more willing to borrow money. This puts cheap money into the banking system and money works its way through consumers and business into the economy.  This works well in ordinary times mostly as fine tuning, but when we are subject to shocks, like the recession, we can’t make money cheap enough that people actually will spend it. Right now, given the rate of inflation, money is effectively free to borrow. But people still aren’t lending or borrowing.  There is wide consensus that monetary policy is necessary under fiat (monopoly) money.  There is wide consensus that monetary policy can decrease the problems of money shortage compared to the gold standard. The criticism is that monetary policy exaggerates booms and busts.  WIDESPREAD CONSENSUS OTHER THAN LIBERTARIANS

    c) Fiscal Policy (Keynesians) : when necessary, the government borrows (or prints) and spends money on all sorts of programs in order to put money into the economy using the goverment’s spending network.  The problem is that it does take some time to work its way into people’s hands. There are not “shovel ready’ projects available and they take time.  And the real reason people object is because it finances political corruption, and the party in power tends to spend it in partisan fashion. (WHich is why the republicans won’t allow it right now.)  The other reason is that people just don’t trust the government any longer.  So they don’t want to reward the government.  The third reason is that conservatives in particular do not want to expand the government, but contract it.  FAVORED BY THE LEFT

    d) Industrial Policy: the government should (as do most other countries) invest in particular industries that will create jobs and lead to a competitive advantage.  INdustrial policy is usually accompanied by TRADE POLICY (import export controls and taxation).  The asian countries have used these policies to their benefit. China in particular.  The right and libertarians abandoned industrial policy and moved to free trade when the unions allied with the left.  But industrial policy is naturally attractive to the right.  For all intents and purposes, industrial policy has been abandoned in the USA. FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, DESPISED BY LIBERTARIANS.

    e) Human capital policy (Education) : Education policy is the means of improving the competitive value of citizens in relation to other countries.  It takes a very long time for  education policy to take effect.  The germans have demonstrated the best understanding of education. Although most americans would find their model invasive.
    FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, FAVORED BY LIBERTARIANS, ACTIVELY UNDERMINED BY THE LEFT.

    f) Strategic Policy (Military Policy): control of global trade routes, oil, and petro dollars is one of the most important reasons for the USA’s standard of living, despite the relative lack of competitiveness of it’s working classes.  This is a very complex and long topic, but strategic policy IS ECONOMIC POLICY.  The average american gets a pretty big return on his military expenditures. But that’s an unpleasant reality for many.  Strategic policy takes a very long time to play out. But most countries engage in it.  Iran for example is trying to become the core state of islamic civilization and control world oil supplies and prices, and by doing so, eliminate the discount that western citizens pay for oil. 
    FAVORED BY THE RIGHT, DESPISED BY LIBERTARIANS AND THE LEFT

    This needs to be a book length topic but hopefully it illustrates that political philosophy and economic philosophy are two different things.  But that economic philosophy is divided into specialties that correlate with the different sides of the political spectrum.

    One thing is for certain: economists will talk as if they are far more certain than they are or can be. We are too inexperienced in the field of economics, and the problem is far too complex for us to be sure of what we are doing. In effect, we are running a very big experiment on humanity. It seems to be working reasonably well. But some patients are definitely harmed in the process.  The most important of which is that we are expanding the population to questionable levels.

    (I have a splitting headache so i will have to come back and check this for edits this later.  -Cheers)

    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-different-philosophies-of-economics

  • A Note To Jonathan Haidt: An Explanation Of Elite Conservative Strategy Since Reagan

    Jonathan Haidt first attacks republicans then rescinds it. I try to put conservative strategy in context. And in that context it’s quite simple. It’s an extension of the tactic used against world communism: “Resist until they go bankrupt.” If you understand this strategy everything the conservatives and Republicans do makes complete sense. Everything. Jonathan, Very interesting post, and equally interesting comments. One commenter above writes that you (Jonathan) should perhaps seek to understand conservative elite theory. (People like me.) The conservative intellectuals succeeded in defeating world communism and socialism through a variety of military, political, economic, and intellectual tactics. But conservatives failed to come up with a strategy for defeating democratic redistributive socialism and the secular progressive attack on the meritocratic hierarchical conservative society. Due to this failure, the libertarians, who are explicitly economic in their strategy, took over leadership of the anti-collectivism, and whenever possible, the conservatives adopted the libertarian economic and political program. But about the time of Reagan, conservative thought leaders looked at the demographic data and determined that the program of expanding statism would win out over time. So, the conservatives abandoned their belief that they could gain a majority and keep control of the state, or even defend themselves against it. And instead, they increased militarism, worked to increase home ownership, and tried to rekindle entrepreneurship rather than government as the central narrative behind western success. They then allied with the capitalist class to attempt to bankrupt the state before european style nanny state could develop. This was consistent with the approach to communism: “Just resist them and wear them out. They will eventually fail because their concept of an economy is unsustainable.” The conservative battle against the state is simply the conservative tactic against world communism replayed. It is perhaps useful to note that the conservative argument against central planning, urban planning, welfare disincentives, laxity on crime and punishment, the social and economic impact of the dissolution of the institution of marriage, as well as the problem of the ponzi financing strategy of social programs (rather than the Singapore model of forced and subsidized savings) were all correct. The conservative vision of hubristic man and economic incentives is more accurate a world view than the liberal egalitarian ideal. And while it is not that we cannot use the ideas of both sides. It is that progressive desires must be accomplished through conservative means: retaining the relationship between cause, effect and incentives. The USA, as a set of political institutions, faces the multicultural problem that faces all empires. It currently must cope with the combination of a)”The Demands Of Empire” that give the state greater scope than just the nation + b)”Nine Nations Of North America” which represent geographic differences in culture + c)”Racial Self-Preference in Association, and Differences In Ability” + d)”Gender Biases” + e) The class exaggerating effect of the extraordinary economic advantage of having an IQ greater than 105 in the information economy. All of these biases exist within a set of political institutions designed to resolve conflicts in priority between property owning males with homogenous norms. It is not possible to resolve conflicts over ends using decision making by majority rule. In the market we cooperate on means and are ignorant of one another’s ends. In majority rule government, there are winners and losers because we argue over ends. Majority rule must (as Federalist papers 10 stated) lead to extra-political resolution of conflict between groups with such mutually exclusive goals. Liberals slant toward the female reproductive strategy (the largest number of human births with the most equal experience) and the conservatives slant toward the male reproductive strategy (the most competitive tribe with the best people in charge of it.) This level of conflict over instinctual preference will not be resolved by the liberal desire to use our instituions of majority rule to suppress the instincts of the other side any more than conservatives would succeed in encouraging liberals to adopt conservative norms. For this reason, something has to give. Either demographics have to play out (it’s possible), or the federal government has to devolve (unlikely without catastrophic military or economic causes) or we will have to develop new institutions that allow us to federate while pursuing opposing social ends (Just as unlikely). But it’s also just as likely that we will lose our high trust society as groups seek extra-political means of status seeking (like Mediterranean’s and Eastern Europeans, and Russians.) And if we lose that we will also lose our risk taking – which is why we’re a wealthy economy. Risk taking creates innovation. But the USA is too big and too diverse ann empire to persist as we have known it. Classical liberalism is a means of governance for a small state or a small federation. Not an empire. And the USA is an empire. The Classical mutli-house model did not work for the british empire, and it will not work for the american empire. So while I believe you have finally supplied the social sciences with the language by which to understand political conflcits I do not believe that the conflict is resolvable. People under Russian and Chinese socialism developed ‘black markets’ for everything. People under majority rule who have opposing interests will develop extra-political ‘black markets’ for power. They will circumvent the political institutions to achieve their desired ends. The state will attempt to preserve itself by increasing control, which will only expand the black markets. The liberals circumvented the constitution, and the conservatives circumvent the state apparatus. There is no solution here without changes to our institutions. In government, big is bad and small is good. The city state and a mobile population allow the greatest diversity and freedom. So the problem we have is finding an institutional solution to that equilibrium: allowing federation of some things but not federation of norms.

  • ELITE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY TO JONATHAN HAIDT It’s about bankrupting the state t

    http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/06/15/a-note-to-jonathan-haidt-an-explanation-of-elite-conservative-strategy-since-reagan/EXPLAINING ELITE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY TO JONATHAN HAIDT

    It’s about bankrupting the state the way we bankrupted world communism. In that light, everything conservatives and Republicans do is completely logical.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-15 10:51:00 UTC

  • “I consider Libertarians to be like Celtic barbarians deployed by British kings

    “I consider Libertarians to be like Celtic barbarians deployed by British kings in the Middle Ages against the Scots or the French. They are extremely useful for fighting your enemies, but you would never want one to actually sit on the throne. ” – Jonah Goldberg, National Review

    I’m not quite sure what I think that’s so funny, and so true. But I can’t stop laughing. It’s exactly how conservatives use libertarians.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-06-12 19:35:00 UTC

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Why Are Many Muslim Countries Run By Dictators?

    The Muslim countries were part of the Ottoman empire.  The Ottomans could not modernize for complex reasons, and could not compete with western expansion.

    When the empire fell, the westerners attempted to establish order in the conquered territories, by creating small states. And they promoted leaders in those states.

    Oil has been a strategic necessity in the 20th century and Muslim countries are sitting on it.

    The west was concerned about the expansion of world communism into the Muslim countries and thereby an alliance between those oil producers and Russia and china.  This would have dramatically endangered the west.

    The west attempted successfully to suppress the world communist movement in the Muslim countries by supporting leaders who could hold the popular communist movements at bay, while permitting oil to trade on the market.

    Dictatorship is a natural and common form of government and the idea that it is not is a modern contrivance.  Democracy as we understand it is a luxury that is the product of our technological development. Not the other way around  It is an intellectual mistake to think of it otherwise.  The rest of the world has decided that western democracy is for westerners. THe reason the west is different, and less corrupt, is that we managed to break family bonds of loyalty that are the very reason for existence in the rest of the world. The rest of the world may not achieve our form of democracy because corruption is endemic because they retain the primacy of tribal and familial bonds over that of the collective.

    The USA’s strategy since the second world war has been to prevent the rise of communist and socialist governments until the middle classes in each country can become developed enough to desire capitalism and democratic government, at which point they believe that most countries will become peaceful and predictable members of the world system of trade. 

    The USA pays for and administers the world system of trade.  In exchange we are able to print money and sell it, while deflating it. The rest of the world then uses these dollars to buy oil. I this way we tax the rest of the world for paying for our military program that defends the system of trade.  This is coming to an end.  The USA is seeking to prolong the need for the  dollar for the average American will experience a dramatic decline in his standard of living if the dollar is no longer in demand for oil purchases.

    Iran and Russia are attempting to create alternative oil exchanges not using dollars in order to undermine the ability of the USA to economically finance it’s military and therefore control oil prices.

    Muslim people understand this and it is what is driving their desire to oust dictators and restore their ’empire’ to its former prominence.  They are stifled by corruption, ignorance and poverty.

    The USA does not care who emerges as the leader of that civilization but it would prefer that it was Turkey and not Iran. Iran sees it as its destiny. And if successful iran will unite syria, iraq, iran and pakistan into a political and military block that will control world oil prices.  Russia believes that it will have control over this region, and so are allies. But they are likely mistaken that they will have anything other than a militant neighbor on their southern borders.

    If you can understand this you will understand the world we live in.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-many-Muslim-countries-run-by-dictators

  • Should Political Advertisements Be Banned From Television?

    It would violate the principle of free speech.
    It would increase corruption at the cost of decreasing an annoyance.
    It would very likely decrease voter participation

    https://www.quora.com/Should-political-advertisements-be-banned-from-television

  • What Are The Differences Between The Political Parties In The Usa?

    They represent different sets of alliances.  Mostly those that want to expand the state and those who want to contract it.

    https://www.quora.com/unanswered/What-are-the-differences-between-the-political-parties-in-the-USA