Curt Doolittle

Theme: Governance

  • Reason Is Insufficient To Reform Immigration. Violence Is The Only Political Option.

    A friend posted an article on immigration reform. It’s yet another appeal to perceived wisdom.

    [callout]We can be free, or we can be exploited, or we can be oppressed or we can be enslaved, or we can be murdered. Choose your position on that spectrum. [/callout]

    Once an argument is understood in that it possesses explanatory power, is non-contradictory, and solves a pertinent practical political problem, one can seek consensus. And as long as that consensus appeals to a majority, then a democratic polity can adopt the policies that support the argument. However, the classical liberal ideal cannot be supported within a democracy, and no such rational arguments can prevail, for the sole reason that freedom is the desire of the minority – the creative class. And instead, safety is the objective of the majority. And the majority will always pursue safety rather than liberty. If the freedom-desiring minority loses it’s willingness to use violence to preserve it’s freedom, it will possess neither freedom, nor prosperity. And the rest of the civilization will calcify upon being deprived of the mental fertility of its creative, and therefore, most productive classes. This is the history of civilization. Fertility followed by calcification, followed by conquest and poverty. The answer is not violence, nor is the answer argument. The answer is sufficient argument so that the creative classes will apply violence, for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining the political power needed to secure the minority liberty against the predatory majority’s exploitation of the creative class in order to obtain security. We can be free, or we can be exploited, or we can be oppressed or we can be enslaved, or we can be murdered. Choose your position on that spectrum. Because your actions and the use of violence will determine it. Talk is cheap, and demonstrably ineffective.

  • Angry Old White Men? Hardly.

    Claude Fischer is a sociologist at UC Berkeley who published a piece entitled “Angry Old White Men” in which he categorizes the Tea Party movement as a rural movement of old white men. Mark Thoma, a left-leaning economist picked up the article and posted it on his blog The Economist’s View, where he adds: “Rural America senses that he represents a major shift in the political landscape, one that will no longer put the white male farmer at the center of the American political landscape.” As if its a rural cause rather than a white cause. To which others add:

    “What we’ve got here is a real warning sign that something in our society just isn’t working. It’s not just hand-wringing liberals and right-wing Christians anymore; when your educated upper-middle classes start lashing out, you know the regime’s days are numbered.”

    and

    “The hate directed at “white men” by so many members of leftist establishment(s) borders on blood lust. At their deep core is a burning anger that they focus on the “white man” taking delight in belittling, marginalizing, and taunting that demographic. Perhaps the “delicious irony” is that many of these folks proudly flaunt their fake “tolerance” and calls for “peace” while obviously unable to control their desire to stoke division and strife.”

    and this:

    “Did these [old white guys, especially affluent, Protestant ones] give ground or was it an enlightened choice? … My guess is the shift had more to do with U.S. government based public education, by mostly female primary school teachers, which gave children a sense of respect for all. It still took many generations.

    The last of which is actually the structural answer: our schools teach democratic secular humanism in an effort to replace our traditions and cultures with a state religion. We do not have a separation of church and state. We have a state religion and we send most of our children to the theocracy for education. White Protestants lost political power, status and their culture due to “enlightened choice”. There was no material reason why they HAD to lose power. They chose to be ‘Christian’, which was the sentiment needed to unify a fragmented europe. They could just as easily have chosen to keep slavery, to keep control of government, to forbid immigrants political power, to maintain the requirement of protestantism. In other words, they could have done what most civilizations have done. What most civilizations still do. In fact, the entire purpose of nationalism was to give racial groups their own sovereignty after centuries of tribal distribution across monarchic europe. It Wasn’t Political Power, It Was Economic Power Starting with the industrial revolution, the dominance of the HOUSEHOLD lost importance, and there for the dominance of the MALE waned. The decline has been not just among white men, but among men in particular. Women’s entry into the work place has not hurt high performing men, but since women have taken all the lower risk clerical functions in society, and seem to largely be better suited for it, this has moved men toward the edges – into the riskier professions. They Gave Up Power Voluntarily These voluntary abdicators of male political power were Christians. They tried the experiment. It was a heady debate. We have just wrapped class, race and cultural preference in a deep cloak of secular language instead of religious language. But the underlying sentiments and logic are essentially the same. We have a religion of democratic, secular humanism rather than paternal christianity. The difference is that the political myth of the ‘white man’s burden’ of anglo exceptionalism in order to morally justify the empire, has become the myth of democratic secular humanism in order to justify the empire. The Experiment Failed What has happened is that these previously tolerant people believe that the experiment failed. That their conservative sentiments (the belief that humans have immutable behaviors), have returned to precedence over their liberal sentiments (people can aspire to utopian behavior in the right environment) have changed. White Men in particular tolerated man-hating feminism because they felt it was somewhat justified, but that society would ‘settle back’ because people have ‘natural tendencies’. White Men felt that because of slavery and WW2, that they were wrong in their fantasy of exceptionalism – that they had betrayed their christian sentiments, and so they tolerated criticism in the hope that society would settle down. White men today no longer believe those egalitarian myths. WHen you destroy a mythos you don’t destroy just the ‘bad parts’. You destroy the entire system of myths. They no longer believe in their guilt. They now feel equally wronged. The Levant Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan, describes how he and his fellow members of the levant thought that they had solved the problem of heterogeneity, and that they were more civilized than the rest of the world. But it was a myth. That small civilization is now dead and gone, and gone within his lifetime. People continue to murder each other in droves around the world. And while capitalism decreases costs and increases quality of life, and it because of the prosperity, decreases the incentive to devolve into violence, it is not a sufficient tool for altering the human perception of status, nor of the realities of cooperating in groups: tribes remain fixed in their cooperative networks even under capitalism. It’s just FRICTION that is less important because there is less scarcity of opportunity. What Happens Next The question becomes, a) whether white men will cease tolerating their denigration and become activists, – or b) whether they will do what men have in all other collapsed cultures, which is abandon the Fraternal Order, and become like byzantines, Mediterraneans, or africans, and simply pursue non-political localized self interest which will over time, simply erode the legitimacy of the state. There is another option c) which is violence. But that is always a minority position because it is so costly. And if history is a guide we will get all three of these factors. Western Protestant Culture Is An Anomaly The sentiments of white male culture are an anomaly. It is the product of the fraternal order of city-defending soldiers who treat the ‘market’ (which they don’t differentiate from ‘society’) as if they were shareholders. That sentiment is extremely rare. If that sentiment ceases, we will not get the civilization that utopians aspire to. We have a lot of historically similar situations. We might get something random. But history tells us what we will get will not likely be the ‘free society’ that we aspired to. Urbanization Affects Social Institutions By Increasing Anonymity And Decreasing Economic Conformity We are urbanizing, world wide. And we must. There are too many of us to return to farming. We no longer live where we are self sustaining yet produce excess in order to participate in the market for the purpose of getting money with which to buy what we cannot produce. Nearly all of us must participate in the market for our entire livelihood, trading our skills in manipulating someone else’s tools and materials for money so that we can buy ALL of our needs in the market. We live in a world of perceived risk, surrounded by plenty. But urbanization under market-centricity poses difficult problems. The problem of ‘social order’ (conformity to law or convention) occurs when any civilization sufficiently urbanizes. The human social tools of ostracization (economic exclusion) and fraternalism (economic inclusion) do not operate in dense populations where anonymity is common and therefore social ostracization alone cannot block people from opportunities. There is no evidence that these social tools operate in the dense urban environment. There is no evidence that Law or Religion can cause them to operate either. The Shift To A Racial Minority This is the last generation where white men will feel guilty about their position. They feel disempowered. They are soon to be a minority. They dislike being ridiculed and having their status trampled upon, and are rapidly considering it RACISM against them. (Which they believe will give them the right in turn, to be racist.) The question is what will they do. And if history is any indicator, most of them will do nothing but acquiesce. But like any racial group they will likely form a disenfranchised but radical minority who is activist. This is what is occurring today. If the minority gains traction it gains followers from those who perviously acquiesced – people follow a winning team. White men are also developing the sentiment of racial persecution, and with it, the egalitarian christian sentiments, and their historical guilt are waning. When a people are oppressed they revert to self serving behavior and abandon behaivors of social sacrifice. The Forgone Opportunity Economy Society is not paid for by taxes. We pay for bureaucrats and soldiers with taxes. Society, or social order, is paid for by refraining from seizing opportunities. We create property by not stealing. We create comfort and safety with manners. We create prosperity and frictionless trade by non-corruption and ethical behavior. We prevent ourselves from externalizing high costs to others, and often to ourselves by moral behavior. We take on the burden of truth-telling. We define the granularity of property, the rules of the market. Each of us does ten thousand things a day to pay the tax for social order. And that tax system of opportunity costs is what we call ‘culture’. it is the highest cost of human capital a group can invest in. Groups with different systems compete. They get angry with one another because they ‘sense’ theft or fraud, not of money, but of the sacrifices that they made for their group’s benefit. They get angry when their sacrifices (forgone opportunities) are wasted when another race or social class demeans them. In this way, human groups conduct forgone-opportunity-funded warfare, but they largely do it peacefully. This is the racial and cultural economy. Money, Status, Forgone Opportunity, Access to Opportunity, and Access To Mates. Money is the least of them. Political power is simply the means by which to control the economy. Not just the money economy. But the status, opportunity and mating economy. Institutions (self-perpetuating social habits) are the highest cost development for any civilization. The people in the civilization know the costs. They know the opportunities that they spent on building that cost. They know the taxes that they paid. THey know what property is theirs that they earned. And egalitarianism and charity are happily given as long as they are FRACTIONAL and do not allow one group to steal its institutional costs from another. People are not having a simple emotional reaction. They see usurpation of political power as THEFT. They are ACTING like they see it as theft. The Implications For everyone else who is not a white male, it becomes the question how a society can be managed, or how it will operate without those sentiments of fraternalism. We never get what we think we will. The French and Russian revolutions were horrific both in process and outcome. But most if not all civilizations simply decay once they urbanize, and their expansionist class of males surrenders to the sense of impotence, or the luxury of hedonism, by exporting the effort needed to maintain the social order to the bureaucracy. The general assumption is that the democratic process will solve this problem of social integration and power distribution. But there is no evidence in history that such a thing occurs but rarely, and almost exclusively in England. Politics is a market, and people will circumvent the market when it no longer serves them. No Longer A Nation But An Empire The USA, thanks to Teddy Roosevelt and his ilk, is an empire in imitation the european model. Empires consist of factions. Factions are geographic (trade routes), racial (genetic), cultural (normative), and religious (legal). But an empire over whom half the population feels oppressed and stolen from is simply fragile. We are no longer a country contentiously dealing with a problem of integration caused by our need for population to complete the westward expansion of the continent. Instead we are an empire over some number of smaller nations yearning to be free, and a disenfranchised geographic ex-majority that appears to be developing a new sentiment (acquiescence to failure), a political movement (tea party), and a radical movement (militias). At least, that is where this appears to be going, if history is any indicator. And men who no longer see the existing order as beneficial to them may not work to overthrow it, but they will not work to maintain it. And that may be worse. The Difference Between Methods The difference between conservatives and progressives lies in the different assumptions we have of human nature. Progressives are utopians that believe we are free to build whatever world we choose to – they err on the side of people ‘doing good’ which is why progressivism is a movement of the industrial period. Conservatives err on the side of people ‘pursuing self interest’ which is why conservatism is an ancient sentiment, although conservatism as a political movement is a reaction to the english and french revolutions and the rise of socialism and communism. It is a contemporary reaction to progressivism. And like all conservative movements it is a reaction to the perception of theft of one’s assets by political means (even if those assets were unjustly acquired as in mercantilism or predatory banking or slavery). Conservatives believe that human beings have innate sensibilities, biases and preferences that are immutable. And because they are immutable we should develop institutions that take these immutable differences into account. We should expect people to act with racial preferences because people almost always do act with racial preferences. They do so because intra-racial status is more beneficial for the majority than is extra-racial status. And status controls access to mates. Except at the extremes where status can be increased by breaking racial barriers, status determines access to mates, determines access to opportunities, access to networks, in general, access to a better life. The Economics Of Race And The Impact On Politics So the question is, what will happen in a world where we have a white minority whose traditions create the opportunity for democracy and rotation of the elites, and most people have racial preferences, where there is no method of organization urban conformity, but we have a political system that allows democratic rotation of elites? In general, at least in history, people tend to vote in what is called “Bonapartism” or a totalitarian who can forcibly resolve differences. Bonapartism is democratic totalitarianism. Our systemic answer to urbanization was credit. Credit is more useful than laws because with record keeping it produces both positive and negative incentives. We are likely going to continue to build the credit society instead of the religious and legal societies. In fact, law is so technical it is largely immaterial, and most people are both isolated from it and ignorant of it. We actually operate by credit and exchange instead of legal or religious conformity. We live in the credit society. But while credit solves the problem of anonymity and ostracization, it does not solve the problem of tribal and cultural sovereignty, which is a code-phrase for the system of status signals among people with racial and cultural similarities. In a world of economic plenty and cheap debt and fiat money there is an inflationary impact upon status perceptions that like a tide floats all boats and reduces class and race friction. But in a world of unemployment, which may be structural, permanent, and wherein opportunities are more scarce, and therefore racial status more advantageous, and in a society where there is a very large and disenfranchised minority that is government by an activist political system that they see as tyrannical and against their interest, it seems unlikely that people will support that government, that way of life, or even the assumption that the government and way of life are ‘goods’. Race matters. Race matters because ENOUGH people act with racial preferences, and MORE of them act with racial preferences under economic duress, because acting within racial preferences is economically rewarding for the majority of its members. It’s just simple economics.

  • Postcards From Hell: The Reason For Failed States

    Postcards from Hell

    A terrifying photo essay from Foreign Policy on the world’s failed states. Note that with just a few exceptions, the 60 or so states the magazine had determined to be “failed” are located in tropical climates. Someone recently sent me this fascinating video related to the new book by sociologist Philip Zimbardo (of the Stanford prison experiments fame–or infamy, I guess). The theme of Zimbardo’s new book is the way time is perceived among different cultures. Of relevance to the Foreign Policy essay is the idea that populations and cultures in northern climes have adopted a future-oriented timeframe, likely because it’s necessary for their survival. You have to stock food, fortify shelter, and so on to prepare for the winter months or you’re going to starve. Or freeze. Tropical populations have a more present-oriented concept of time. Food is available year round. There’s no winter for which they need to prepare. I’ve read some interesting commentary on how these differing concepts of time might explain why warmer countries have been slower to develop than cooler ones.

    The reasons for the under-development of Tropical States are as as follows: 1) Disease gradients are lower (safer) in the cold and higher (harsher) in the warm. 2) Physical effort is difficult in hot weather, which hampers the creation of built capital. (core body temp also affects iq during exertion) 3) Agrarian cycles in the north encourage cottage industry in winter, farming in spring and fall and war in summer. This creates certain social orders that foster human, built and technical capital accumulation. Compare to the brutal survival farming of the Chinese and their 360 day-a-year discipline of rice farming. 4) Rivers or seas, but rivers in particular provide safe, easy and low cost product transport. The opposite is true: some areas are simply geographically resistant to trade. 5) Unequal distribution of useful plants and animals favors certain regions. As well as agrarian productivity. 6) Access to trade means access to knowledge, and greater availability of resources and technology. This increases the probability of innovation, and the development of ‘virtues’ as we understand our commercial and moral code.

    [callout] The abstract thing we refer to as society, that ‘thing’ that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call ‘social order’, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. [/callout]

    7) The abstract thing we refer to as society, that is embodied in the accumulated habits that we call social order, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. These habits define the unspoken normative goals that define cooperation and coordination. (The set of things that we don’t do: the opportunities we do not sieze. We pay for social institutions by forgoing opportunity, we pay for infrastructure and governance with the results of trade.) These institutions include our different definitions of public and private property, manners, ethics, morals and rituals. These require political institutions that perpetuate them one adopted. 8) General technical knowledge. (how to craft things) General systemic knowledge (how the natural world operates). We often confuse education with practical knowledge and scientific knowledge. ( the Muslim world is full of Islamic studies which do nothing except persist in resisting ignorance. the sub Saharan world is still in the embrace of magical thinking. ). Commerce not education (imitation of practice) is the primary means of knowledge transfer. 9) Concordant technologies. Civilizations need to accumulate a greatdeal of human capital in order to adopt certain technologies before they can adopt others, else these technologies are not disruptive, and do not increase the division of knowledge and labor. Otherwise tyrants simply use it to institutionalize corruption and profiteering. This isn’t any different from children but on a larger scale. If people do not forgo the opportunity to misuse a technology, they will never be able to gain its productive benefits. You don’t give a child a gun. 10) Social orders. The west was built by fraternal orders of city/market joint stockholders, partly because of the high cost of equipment and training. This is the source of our republican sentiments, as well as our tools of argument,reason and science. Other societies have not been so lucky. Now we get to how westerners hurt some cultures: 1) Creating political boundaries across tribes destroys their ability to create human capital because it over stimulates the need for group persistence and impedes the development of common market habits. Thievery and tribal banditry is much easier and cheaper than creating trade and infrastructure. Even today, there is no small sentiment among males that suggests civilization has limited their potential access to mates. 2) Colonialism under England was effective in creating stability. In fact the hallmark of the Anglo model is stability and stability fosters the accumulation of all forms of capital. If you were colonized by someone else, then you will suffer for it. Anglo social technology is as important as the development of Greek science and reason. That technology, unbenknownst to most of us, is the development of abstract principles that allow calculation and coordination. ( this is a very complex topic.). French colonies are a disaster. 3) Economic interference, and in particular the crime of Charity. Ths is a hotly debated problem. But individual and locals assistance by devoted people seems to make a difference, while insertion of capital is extremely harmful to developing economies that must transform from tribal to market economies. Unpleasant realities :

    [callout]IQs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever … [/callout]

    And the one factual reality that the vast body of people will fail to accept in the face of universal, overwhelming and scientifically evidence: that iqs are unequally distributed in different races, and in clases within those races. And that all people are racist in that they prefer acting within and in cooperation with people of their race. And this will never change, ever, simply because of the imitative nature of man, his need to learn, and his desire to learn from those he most easily can imitate. And the consequential need for, conceptions of status in order to choose who to imitate.

    [callout]While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes are decidedly inelastic.[/callout]

    When the hard reality is that women are hypergamic (marry up), while men have a wider iq variance than women, it presents men with the need to compete for mate selection. And this system requires a diverse economy of status symbols within each race and class that guarantee the eternal search for demonstrable differences in status in order to pursue both mates and opportunities for alliances.. Racism is permanent as is classism. The dirty secret of the human genome project is that class is genetically determinant. While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes (which are readily evidenced in the postings on this and other blogs) are decidedly inelastic. (spoken as a member of the upper middle class). Furthermore IQs are different in consequence between groups. A white, Jew or east Asian with a sixty iq is perceptibly broken. A sub saharan African is not – he or she just has a higher barrier to the learning of abstractions. In general, To maintain machines requires a 105 IQ. To get a liberal education requires an IQ of 110. To design machines requires an IQ of 122 . To design abstractions requires an IQ above 130. To innovate upon a system of thought requires, it appears, above 140. Everyone else simply uses the tools created by others. It is demonstrably true that the top quintile has more influence on productivity of the society than all the rest combined. Since all societies are run by minority elites (even ours) the composition of elites in government, intelligence in the middle classes, and capable mechanics in the proletariat determine the competitive rates of innovation and change in a society. There are also ways to manufacture ignorance. Some religions are regressive. In fact it could be reasonably argued that many are simply dangerous. The reason one is out gunned out germed and out steeled, so to speak, is a function of a culture’s willingness to adapt disruptive technologies. Luddites perish. Most of the scriptural religions are Luddite systems of thought.

    [callout]… it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our politicians demonstrate daily.[/callout]

    Despite these iq distribution differences, it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our pliticians demonstrate daily. What is important is that in any sufficiently large body of people exist sufficient numbers to adopt the rule of law, the intitutions of trade, and some form of capital production. The problem is one of numbers: getting the barbarians and potential corrupt bureaucrats to forgo opportunities for personal gain in order to fund the development of their human capital. The problem of coordinating production in a division of knowledge and labor requires a great deal of sacrifice. It is the is a sufficient set of principles govern the progress and adaptability of cultures. As other readers have commented, colonialism is perhaps the greatest determinant today of the relative state of failed nations. I hope this was helpful in providing food for thought.

  • Invert The Tax System And Give Control To The States?

    The wealthy states export leftism and money to the poorer states. This redistribution is hidden by the ‘money laundering’ that occurs when taxes are pooled then redistributed through the tax and legal bureaucracies.

    [callout]The wealthy states export leftism and money to the poorer states. This redistribution is hidden by the ‘money laundering’ that occurs when taxes are pooled then redistributed through the tax and legal bureaucracies.[/callout]

    The majority of the federal budget gies to redistributive programs. Effectively an over extended intergenerational insurance company relying upon external uncompetitiveness, internal growth, and internal population The problem with turning programs over to the states is the lack of competence in state and local government. Especially the higher incidence of corruption in local government.

    [callout]People do not hate government. They hate the necessary corruption that comes with human behavior in a bureaucracy whenever the limits of the bureaucrat’s knowledge are exceeded, and the necessary contrivances of bureaucrats who are intentionally isolated from the market and the pricing system, become a predatory liability to the freedoms of the citizens under the rubric of efficiency and practicality – a failure of bureaucracies but not private sector business that is entirely at the service if the pricing system.[/callout]

    What troubles the poorer states despite their receipt of cash benefits is priority given to urban density, urban political gains from immigration, debt expansion., bias against lower productive but self supporting non urban groups, and cultural tyranny. The soution is to limit the federal government to non social programns, to return money to the states as you suggest, and to privatize all possible government services, while increasing audits of the private sector companies. People do not hate government. They hate the necessary corruption that comes with human behavior in a bureaucracy whenever the limits of the bureaucrat’s knowledge are exceeded, and the necessary contrivances of bureaucrats who are intentionally isolated from the market and the pricing system, become a predatory liability to the freedoms of the citizens under the rubric of efficiency and practicality – a failure of bureaucracies but not private sector business that is entirely at the service if the pricing system.

  • Why Are So Many Equatorial Nations ‘Failed States’?

    This posting is in response to “Postcards From Hell: Images fom the world’s most failed states” and commentary on The Agitator. Why are so many equatorial nations ‘Failed States’? “All happy families are the same. All unhappy families are different.” Which means that a lot of things go into making a successful state, and there are a number of reasons why successful advanced cultures develop. And if any one of them goes wrong, a state can fail. Although it will most likely be conquered once it has failed. And there is one particular reason why most of the failed states are currently failing: the legacy of colonialism. But let’s look at the reasons why cultures progress differently: 1) disease gradients are higher (safer) in the cold and lower in the warm. 2) physical effort is difficult in hot weather, which hampers the creation of built capital. (Core body temp also affects IQ during exertion) 3) Agrarian cycles in the north encourage cottage industry in winter, farming in spring and fall and war in summer. This creates certain social orders that foster human, built and technical capital accumulation. Compare to the brutal survival farming of the Chinese and their rice. 4) Rivers and sea: rivers in particular provide safe, easy and low cost product transport. The opposite is true: some areas are simply geographically resistant to trade. Europe is gifted with east-west rivers. 5) Unequal distribution of terrain, water, useful plants and animals favors certain regions in agrarian productivity. Mineral deposits favor certain technologies (europe, coal, wood and iron.) 6) Access to trade means access to knowledge, and greater availability of resources and technology. This increases the probability of innovation, and the development of ‘virtues’ as we understand our commercial and moral code. 7) The abstract thing we refer to as social order, that is embodied in accumulated traditions and habits, are the most important and expensive forms of human capital. These habits facilitate the unspoken normative goals of all social and economic cooperation and coordination. We pay for social institutions by forgoing opportunity: the set of things that we don’t do: the opportunities we do not seize. We pay for infrastructure and governance with the results of trade made possible by those forgone opportunities. These institutions include our different definitions of public and private property, manners, ethics, morals and rituals. Manners, ethics and morals are economic codes just as are written laws, most of which, in all of human history, proscribed punishments for violations of manners, ethics and morals. (A vast oversimplification, but an informative one.) 8) The availability of general technical knowledge (how to craft things) and general systemic knowledge (how the natural world operates). We often confuse education with practical knowledge and scientific knowledge. ( The Muslim world is full of Islamic studies which do nothing except perpetuate ignorance. Some of the sub Saharan world is still in the embrace of magical thinking.) Commercial apprenticeship and on the job learning, not education, (imitation of practice) is the primary means of knowledge transfer. Most knowledge (in the USA as well) is political or secular-theocratic rather than useful knowledge. This is the reason the comparative ignorance of our working classes compared to that of europeans. 9) Concordant technologies. Civilizations need to accumulate a greatdeal of human capital by adopting certain technologies before they can adopt others, else these technologies are not disruptive, and do not increase the division of knowledge and labor. Otherwise tyrants simply use it to institutionalize corruption and profiteering. This isn’t any different from children but on a larger scale. If people do not forgo the opportunity to misuse a technology, they will never be able to gain its productive benefits. You don’t give a child a gun. 10) social orders. The west was built by fraternal orders of city/market joint stockholders, partly because of the high cost of equipment and training. This is the source of our republican sentiments, as well as our tools of argument,reason and science. Other societies have not been so lucky. East asia is largely historically oriented. The northern-west is largely future oriented, the greek, greco (southern) italian and eastern block Mediterranean is largely present oriented, and the near east and Indian continent are magically (‘spiritually’) oriented. Social classes have different time preferences, with the highest classes most future oriented, and the lowest classes most present oriented. 11) Political Institutions: what we call ‘rule of law’ is probably the most important for a market economy – because it permits creative disruption and speculation. But more importantly, it requires the ability to concentrate enough power that the political elite can suppress violence in a geography well enough that people can accumulate capital and trade can develop. If trade can develop productivity can increase, and eventually enough extra production can develop that there is something to redistribute to people, first for the purpose of increasing their productivity, and second for increasing the quality of their lives. We avoid discussing the reality of violence, but without the ability to project violence there is no ‘state’. Because that’s what a state is: a territorial monopoly on violence that forces people to use either the market (good) or to become the victims of exploitative totalitarianism (bad). Now we get to how westerners condemned some cultures: 1) Creating political boundaries and political systems across tribes destroys their ability to create human capital because this uncertainty over-stimulates the need for group persistence and impedes the development of market friendly habits. Thievery and tribal banditry is much easier and cheaper than creating trade and infrastructure. Even today, there is no small sentiment among males that suggests civilization has limited their potential access to mates, and their potential joy, by suppressing their desire for tribal banditry. In certain areas of the globe (in which the USA is fighting) tribal banditry is the primary means of status achievement. And the alternative is the grinding poverty of subsistence farming in an arid landscape. Progress is not always as desirable as it may seem. 2) Colonialism under England was effective in creating stability. In fact the hallmark of the Anglo model is stability. In the entire anglo civilization. In the anglo colonies as well. Stability fosters the accumulation of all forms of capital. If you were colonized by someone else, then you will suffer for it. If you were colonized by the french in particular you will have suffered for it. Anglo social technology is as important as the development of Greek science and reason. That technology, unbenknownst to most of us, is the development of abstract principles that allow calculation and coordination. (Even law is a form of mathematics or calculation. This is a very complex topic for this forum so I’ll leave it at that.). French colonies are a disaster. In fact, the unspoken question is, why were some cultures able to be colonized? It was possible to do terrible things to China via trade, but not to colonize it. And while even the Japanese conquered china, they could not hold or colonize it. 3) Economic interference, and in particular interference by way of charity. This is a hotly debated problem. But individual and local assistance by devoted people seems to make a difference, while insertion of capital is extremely harmful to developing economies that must transform from tribal to market economies. Why we understand that socialism is devastating to economies yet we interfere with primitive and less flexible economies with much less capital, is a mystery of western behavior. Unpleasant realities : 1) Mystical Religion: Unfortunately, there are also ways to manufacture ignorance. Some religions are regressive. In fact it could be reasonably argued that many are simply dangerous. Some have argued that they all are dangerous. The reason one is out gunned out germed and out steeled, so to speak, is a function of a culture’s willingness to adapt disruptive technologies. Luddites perish. Most of the scriptural religions are Luddite systems of thought. 2) The Problem Of IQ: Despite the objections of the inequality-deniers, the one factual reality that the vast body of people will fail to accept in the face of overwhelming objective scientific evidence: that IQ’s are unequally distributed in different races — and in clases within those races. 3) The Problem of Status and Racism: All people are racist in that they prefer acting within and with their race. And this will never change simply because of man’s need to learn, his learning by imitation, and his desire to learn from those he most easily can imitate, and his need to identify WHO to imitate. And the consequential need for visible evidence of status in order to choose who to imitate. Status is a necessary epistemological property of human existence. We cannot exist without it. 4) Mate Selection: The hard reality is that women are hypergamic (marry up). This reality is made more complex because men have a wider IQ variance than women, who are more centered around the mean. This situations presents men with the need to compete for mate selection, while women are increasingly selective about their mates, until they reach a point of either opportunity or resignation. (ie: more women are forced to ‘settle’ than are men.) Furthermore, this status economy requires a diverse range of status symbols within each race and class that inform the eternal search for demonstrable differences in status. Furthermore, this means that within races and within classes, except at the margins, greater status is available WITHIN race than without, and therefore people are incentivized to prefer to act and associate within their races. Racism is as permanent as is classism. The dirty secret of the human genome project is that class is genetically determinant. While economic classes are semi randomly plastic, social classes (which are readily evidenced in the postings on this and other blogs) are decidedly inelastic. (spoken as a member of the upper middle class). Furthermore IQs are different in consequence between groups. A white, Jew or east Asian with a 60 IQ is perceptibly broken. A sub saharan African is not – he or she just has a higher barrier to the learning of abstractions. But otherwise is perceptibly healthy. And IQ distributions affect what can be invented, what can be produced, and what can be maintained in a society. In general, To maintain machines requires an IQ of at least 105. To get a liberal education requires an IQ of 110. To design machines requires an IQ of at least 122 . To design abstractions requires an IQ above 130. To innovate upon a system of thought requires, it appears, an IQ above 140. Everyone else simply uses the tools created by others. It is demonstrably true that the top quintile has more influence on productivity of the society than all the rest combined. And it is the number of people with these IQ’s in the population who are educated enough to employ them, in a society with sufficient capital and division of knowledge and labor to make use of their talents. (For this reason, a capitalist china should rule the world in productivity simply because they have so many people above the mechanical threshold, and so much of the population can participate in complex production.) Since all societies are run by minority elites (even ours) the composition of elites in government, speculative intelligence and innovation in the middle classes, and capable mechanics in the proletariat determine the competitive rates of innovation and change in a society. Despite Racial, national, and class differences in IQ distribution, it does not take a genius to run a market economy. As our pliticians demonstrate daily. What is important is that in any sufficiently large body of people exist sufficient numbers to adopt the rule of law, the institutions of trade, and some form of capital production. The problem is one of numbers: getting the barbarians and potential corrupt bureaucrats to forgo opportunities for personal gain in order to fund the development of their human capital. The problem of coordinating production in a division of knowledge and labor requires a great deal of sacrifice. It is the is a sufficient set of principles govern the progress and adaptability of cultures. As other readers have commented, colonialism is perhaps the greatest determinant today of the relative state of failed nations. I hope this was helpful in providing food for thought.

  • An End To Nato? A Different Form For The Monarchical Role

    An End To Nato, “Mike DiBaggio” from The Paleolibertarian Digest

    There was once a time when the US hated piracy so much they went to war over it, but that time has obviously come to an end. Israel’s attack on the Turkish aid ship has generated little obvious outrage in the US, but then again neither did the assault on the USS Liberty. Meanwhile the rest of the world is pretty upset, and Turkey especially. Supposedly, the Turks have vowed to send naval escorts with their ships in the future. The problem for Israel then is that Turkey is a member of NATO. If their ships are attacked again, they it stands to reason that they will try to invoke Article V and call for military retaliation against Israel.

    I agree in principle. However it appears that NATO is a parallel political organization that allows more stable relationships and stronger intelligence gathering and processing than do democratic societies and their fleeting party fashions. NATO functions as a weak imitation of monarchic relationships (which were military alliances) and NATO is providing the material value that was traditionally provided by monarchic relationships. There is no NATO, other than the US military. There really hasn’t every been a NATO other than the US military. The europeans are not capable of projecting power outside of their coastlines. The only material value nato has is to allow the US power in trade negotiations and to increase US debt capacity because of the demand that trade power places upon the dollar. So, while Mike’s logic is accurate given the NAME of NATO, it’s not quite right given the FUNCTION of NATO. The monarchic militaristic social order and social class still exists in the west. It is just nearly invisible because of the predominance of popular representative democracy. Just as the upper class is invisible to society, the military is in visible, and it’s very crucial, very useful, very capitalist relationships and culture are invisible. This is one of the benefits and dangers of democratic systems. They make the real problem of maintaining trade routes and enforcing contracts, and preventing shifts in power by military means, into the art, artifice and entertainment of redistributive government. This distracting entertainment makes the population entirely incognizant of what every poorer country’s citizens understand very clearly : that the purpose of the government, if there is any purpose at all, is to establish and pool investment within a geography so that citizens can compete in, or even participate in, the market. And that this is possibly the only legitimate purpose of government other than territorial defense, and the resolution of differences over property. And the demonization of the military is propaganda for taking political control from the monarchy and transferring it to the middle class under the system of classical liberal republican government. (Just as political control moves to the masses under the system of democratic socialist secular humanism.) Schumpeter didn’t go far enough. Socialism isn’t the only problem we must guard against. Its losing the entire reason why people coordinate in groups: to compete in the market. Or to fail to and return to poverty. Schumpeterian processes might not end in a slowly declining socialism, but a catastrophic end of a society, by ending its comprehension of the market.

  • The Euro. What Will Happen?

    Germany Moves East Germany and Russia are now more politically aligned because they are now economically aligned. Europe will have: 1) the German-Russian block, which will reclaim the eastern block countries. 2) the France and PIGS block (latins – portugal, spain, italy and greece over whom it can feel superior) 3) The UK trying to figure out if it’s part of the Anglo-american, French or German block, and becoming irrelevant unless it simply becomes the world version of switzerland -weak but trustworthy with your money. The European left-coast lost. And the USA can’t protect anyone any longer.

  • Russia And Germany Instead Of France And Germany? One Can Only Hope

    Stratfor has released an article today that suggests that German and Russia have more to offer each other than does the rest of Europe. Russia has intelligent labor, and resources, but it has a terrible capital structure and little technology.  Germany has technology, a terrific capital structure, but needs resources and labor.  Better yet, the labor can stay where it is: in Russia, rather than immigrating into Germany and further burdening its infrastructure and creating additional civil unrest. France will have little chance but to follow germany into the relationship, because it is not powerful enough on its own to unify the Club-Med states (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (the Pigs). What I find most humorous about this pairing, especially given the pro-german position I’ve taken in the Anglo-German European civil war, is that despite being defeated by the Anglo coalition, Germany once again has proven that it is a more prosperous and hard-working and innovative culture than its local competitors.  It has risen from the ashes so to speak.   And left England in the distance. I can’t think of anything I find more attractive: a unified germany and russia.  After all, the south and west have contained Germany for two and a half millennia. The world wars were only the most recent instance of german containment. Now, this has broader implications for Byzantine civilization.  Germany and northern europe are protestant christian civilizations with a positive ethic.  Byzantine civilizations are nominally christian, but have a nihilistic ethic.    How will cooperation change either of these ethics?   How would europe change if the PIGS are left to their own devices? Stratfor has suggested in the past that Turkey is in the likely heir to islamic power, but not byzantine power.  A German-Russian alliance that built byzantine power would be superior at keeping the mandatory-ignorance of Islam at bay, and might resurrect Byzantine civilization, and restore Russia to a leadership position. This kind of talk would have been heresy during the cold war and the possibility of communism. But post-communism, in a world of universal capitalism,  it seems like a win for Germany, Russia, eastern Europe, the rest of Europe by consequence, and humanity by implication.

  • Response to The Washington Post’s ‘Constitution in decline’ : Actionable Plans vs Sentiments

    Joseph Postell of the Heritage Foundation, whom I admire, posts an article in today’s Washington Times entitled Constitutional Decline. Keeping the tradition of picking on your friends, because it’s simply an easier way to make a point than systematic refutation of your enemies, I respond in this posting with a sketch of a more appropriately rational solution, and a more causally descriptive one, than Joseph’s comforting but in-actionable sentiments. His proposition is:

    If we are seeking the most effective means of defending – and restoring – the Constitution, we must pay attention to the rise of the administrative state and the decline of constitutional government in the United States. … The Founders confronted a basic problem: How to vest government with sufficient power to get things done without giving it the instruments to exercise tyrannical control? To protect individual liberty and rights, they established (among others) two basic principles at the center of our constitutional order: representation and the separation of powers. To assure that government operated by consent, they provided that those responsible for making laws would be held accountable through elections. Moreover, legislative, executive and judicial power would be separated so those who made the laws were not in charge of executing and applying them. …

    [callout]… our problem is that we have outgrown, … the civic republican model that is based upon a separation of powers and the … process of rational debate, because our legislators are not free of the limits that socialists fell prey to: the limits of legislative incentives and the limited information necessary for economic consideration, calculation and forecasting. … Our government literally consists of a technological strategy insufficiently informed to make the decisions with which we have empowered it. [/callout]

    Joseph blames the problem rightly on the corrupt bureaucracy. But does not know how to solve the problem: our model of debate is insufficient for our complexity of civilization. We have abandoned communism and socialism because of the problem of incentives and economic calculation in favor of redistributive democratic secular humanism, without understanding that conservative values and classical liberal procedural limits on power or not, our problem is that we have outgrown, by the division of labor and knowledge, and the increase in technological velocity, the civic republican model that is based upon a separation of powers and the calculative process of rational debate, because our legislators are not free of the limits that socialists fell prey to: the limits of legislative incentives and the limited information necessary for economic consideration, calculation and forecasting. Our government literally consists of a technological strategy insufficiently informed to make the decisions with which we have empowered it. Therefore it is open to abuse – not simply because of intention, but because of folly and a lack of means by which to conduct a rational argument. We must divide up the problem of governance differently – while adding computational capability and adding incentives for responsible actions to an increasing number of people – the vast majority of them citizens who are members of the private sector. In other words, the problem is one of calculation: we lack the data to make rational judgements and therefore rely on sentiments. We lack the incentives and therefore fall prey to the bureaucracy. Joseph, Your argument and your sentiments are admirable. But the institutional problem is well understood. It lies in describing the additions to the constitution such that we create alternative institutions free from bureaucratic corruption, yet which are practically implementable, and which would not require violent revolution, nor extraordinary suffering to implement. As well as a plan of implementation and schedule. Sentiments are easy. Sentiments are wishes in the wind. They are the dreams and fantasies of well intentioned men capable of nothing but exposition. They are the masculine version of a romance novel – experientially pleasant but materially vapid.

    [callout]Sentiments are wishes in the wind. They are the dreams and fantasies of well intentioned men capable of nothing but exposition. They are the masculine version of a romance novel – experientially pleasant but materially vapid.[/callout]

    Plans are tangible things open to action, improvement and criticism. And since Mises, Hayek, Popper, Parsons and Rothbard failed to define a rational model for the post-agrarian world, there is no institutional model by which to deliver us from evil so to speak. Our problems are non-trivial, and vastly more complex than reverting to the debate structure of the framers, wherein a small number of men simply exaggerated the city-state model of the greeks, relying upon the wisdom of platonic pseudo-philosohpher kings to make good judgment despite their representation of craftsman, merchant and farmer alike. This is too simple a form of government for a nation of hundreds of millions producing tens of millions of products and services, and a worldwide empire of trade, trade routes, and a world monetary system we treat as third party, but which, like international policing and trade routes, is the primary source of our empire’s power. Our government has expanded and corrupted into exactly what was predicted by the Iron Law of Oligarchy: We have added judicial review – legislation from the bench. We have added a state sponsored religion: democratic secular humanism. And ostracized the church. We have allowed a bureaucracy to develop that cannot be shut down. We have become an empire over distinctly different cultures with distinctly different economic interests. We have become externally dependent upon our most competitive resource – energy. We have transferred the culture from saving while productive to lend while in retirement, to inter-temporal redistribution from the productive to the unproductive. We have converted government from it’s objective of increasing productivity for the purpose of international competition to the effort of redistributing hypothetical gains at the expense of international competition – we have created the predatory state instead of the productive state. [Callout]We have converted government from it’s objective of increasing productivity for the purpose of international competition to the effort of redistributing hypothetical gains at the expense of international competition – we have created the predatory state instead of the productive state.[/callout] We have converted from a culture of integration whose problem was to enfranchise farmers for the purpose of securing our interior from external conquest, to a culture of disintegration that actively undermines integration. We have all but dissolved the states and oppress the country’s center at the bequest of the coasts. We have destroyed our currency, overextended our empire, exhausted our cultural habits of saving and the ‘Protestant ethic’. And turned our cultural majority into a cultural minority open to conquest by tribal primitivism on a scale and at a speed which would have horrified and panicked Roman citizenry. We have instituted ponzi-insurance schemes under the premise of reducing risk for the few, but in doing so created a redistributive scheme of permanent debt, and insurmountable risk for the many.

    [callout ]We have instituted ponzi-insurance schemes under the premise of reducing risk for the few, but in doing so created a redistributive scheme of permanent debt, and insurmountable risk for the many.[/callout]

    We have squandered a century of post-european manufacturing advantage, not to improve our competitiveness, but to export our jobs in the silly believe that the price reductions would be worth the competitive loss of jobs, as if all men in america could be rocket scientists and engineers. We have immigrated cheap labor without understanding the cost of delaying our children’s entry into the work force. We have demasculineized our military without understanding that the secret to western individualism is in the fraternal order of self-sacrificing soldiers, who by their risk gain earned enfranchisement and after such risk would not become obedient to authority. We have allowed our military to become an administrative machine, and police force only able to operate hierarchically rather than a collection of warriors capable of post-industrial defense and conquest from multiple independent angles. We have adopted silly pseudo-libertarian monetary policy and exposed our lower classes to terrific long term risk, and privatized great wealth at the expense of our working classes. We have trained two generations of children to be lifestyle pets rather than productive and competitive citizens. We have demasculinated men and made vast numbers of them abandon society for the comfort of video games or sports, and allowed feminists to take our their wrath on men rather than on the church, the state, and ignorance itself. And forced men into aged poverty in order to secure a consistent standard of living for children who have yet to become productive. We are a debt society with a predatory redistributive kleptocratic state bent on accomplishing through debt slavery and constitutional circumvention what cannot be accomplished through the proscribed constitutional rules and voluntary democratic process. But worse of all, we have vastly increased the division of knowledge and labor and become a society managed by credit rather than law or religion, but we have not updated our government to consist of institutions that act as a bank, when the credit function is primary lever of our post-religion, post-law government. We must amend our constitution for this reality. Our government must act as a bank whose duty is to issue loans and cooperate with the private sector, and socialize the profits of competitive advantage. for redistribution to the common people. It must take only calculated insurance schemes that are the product of gains in productivity earned by borrowing on the promise of the common people. This institutional change will have behavioral consequences that will remake our state as one that is competitive, and resurrect us from the simpleton idiocy of the redistributive and irresponsible state whose actions are not measured, not earned, and only stopped by near revolt at the ballot box, but inescapable once implemented as law. We must relieve the house of commons from the act of taxation ,and allow it only investment and redistribution of the profits. We must close the department of education and institute a voucher scheme. We must privatize all functions of the state and open them to competition. We must vote directly with dollars against competing published contractual budgets, rather than competing individuals whose promises are immaterial. We must restore the senate to election by the state legislatures, and limit both the volume of taxation and origin to the senate.

    [callout]We must reform our lending system so that loans are not escapable by the originator, and vastly increase the number of bankers, and their quality, so that they are at the level of our lawyers, rather than at the level of our book keepers.[/callout]

    We must reform our lending system so that loans are not escapable by the originator, and vastly increase the number of bankers, and their quality, so that they are at the level of our lawyers, rather than at the level of our book keepers. We must restore local banking and personal advocacy of individuals by bankers, so that we do not devolve into an class of the enslaved, as ignorant of compound interest and risk as we are of laws and due process. We must sunset all laws so that they die along with the poor fools who write them. Laws too often institutionalize silly ideas that would be destroyed by the market of daily experience. We must disallow the development of regulations outside of the legal process, and destroy the power of the bureaucracy permanently. We must separate property definitions, and abstract property definitions (like CDO’s, patents, copyrights, stocks) from the legislative process by creating registries for all legally reconcilable traded property types, and remove the ability for patents to prevent products from seeing the market. Put to practice is insufficient a test for protection: put to market is the only protection we should offer. We must change corporate law to provide the same freedom to sole proprietors and partnerships and LLC’s and SC’s and Corps so that we only have one body of law for each, and one method of taxation for all. We must change taxes such that they do not distort human cooperation, require little or no overhead, and are all based upon both income and balance sheet, so that we encourage men to become independent, but protect the people from the political class of financial predators who circumvent the market purely by the application of capital. We can have redistribution. People under fiat money are DUE redistribution, because it is they who are borrowed against and whom take the risk.

    [callout]We can have redistribution. People under fiat money are DUE redistribution, because it is they who are borrowed against and whom take the risk.[/callout]

    We can maintain our empire, our freedom, our way of life. But it must be calculable to be responsible and accountable. Right now it is unregulated chaos of extreme borrowing using snake oil formulae peddled by charlatan economists, snake oil mathematicians and other hucksters who are no better than entrail-readers, oracles and bone-augers and less accurate it turns out at inter-temporal prediction than the average man on the street. THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM FACING US IS THE WEAKNESS OF THE DEBATE MODEL OF GOVERNMENT IN THE FACE OF THE CALCULATIVE COMPLEXITY OF OUR CIVILIZATION. OUR MODEL IS JUST TOO WEAK. The problem of socialist calculation is still evident in the debate model of government. OUr problem is sufficient information to make decisions, and limiting decisions to where we have sufficient information, and avoiding legislation that uses quantitative, methodological and ideological charlatainism. Some of us who spend time on these theories are diligently working in back rooms, offices, academic institutions, think tanks, cars and showers to solve this problem. But it is not a problem of sentiments. It is a problem of execution.

    [callout ]Institutionalizing this degree of change will not come without violence or trauma. It never has. It never will. [/callout]

    Institutionalizing this degree of change will not come without violence or trauma. It never has. It never will. There are too many with vested interests feeding off the predatory state. But some of us are now more willing to take that risk than we were over the past decades. And it takes only about five percent of a population to force such a change, if that group is willing enough to act to enforce the change.

  • A Response To Arnold Kling’s: The Church Of Libertarianism

    Arnold Kling continues one of his themes by writing on one of my favorite topics, “The Churches Of Government”, where he laments the overlaps and conflicts between different conservative and libertarian philosophies.

    You see, I think that the overlap between liberals and libertarians is somewhat suspect. The libertarian thinks that government should get out of the business of regulating marijuana primarily because the libertarian believes in limited government. The liberal thinks that government should get out of the business of regulating marijuana because the liberal doesn’t think marijuana is such a problem.

    And later he explains the philosophical problem:

    Still, I believe that it ought to be possible for a conservative to be in the Church of Limited Government rather than the Church of Unlimited Government. In theory, I would think that a conservative might really care about education or health care without necessarily favoring government involvement. However, in practice many conservatives went along with President Bush when he expanded Medicare and the Federal government’s role in primary education. My sense is that his approach to conservatism has few adherents at the moment.

    To which I would respond, that the reason for confusion on this issue is the failure of the conservative, classical liberal, and libertarian movements, to provide an articulated alternative solution to socialism while at the same time, maintaining their long standing justification for taking power from the monarchy in order to implement a democratic republic managed by the capitalist class.

    [callout]… the reason for confusion .. is the failure of the conservative, classical liberal, and libertarian movements, to provide an articulated alternative solution to socialism while at the same time, maintaining their long standing justification for taking power from the monarchy.[/callout]

    And finally, a reader comments: “From a libertarian point of view, it would be inconsistent to advocate legalizing marijuana and banning trans fats.” And from there I try to use the author’s and reader’s inability to distinguish the reasons for regulating products differently as one of state intervention not of market management. Actually, the two issues are different. Marijuana The only reasons to ban marijuana are: 1) Because it impedes the mind, and therefore choice, and choice is a necessary capacity, and necessary assumption, in the libertarian model. This is a technical concept, not a practical one. 2) Because you can expose others to risk due to impaired judgement, largely while driving a vehicle. This concept is both technical and practical. Justifying the application of force must be both technical (epistemically rational) and practical (materially implementable). Epistemic applications alone are infinite and open to error. (ie: laws should be enforceable not specious.) Trans fats Foods are a voluntary health issue, not an externalized risk issue or capacity issue. The libertarian concept of freedom allows people to harm themselves. However, since it is not possible to make a rational choice over the content of goods , regulating labeling is not a question of freedom but a question of limiting fraud or accidental harm in a market. Libertarianism’s Failures Classical liberalism is an outgrowth of conservatism. Libertarianism is an outgrowth of Classical Liberalism. Rothbardian anarchism is an outgrowth of libertarianism. The only fully articulated philosophy is the Rothbardian. The Classical Liberal philosophy is analogistic, pragmatic, and contractual. But it is a practical moral philosophy, not a necessary logical philosophy. Necessity and utilitarianism are two different kinds of problems. Rothbard fully articulated his philosophy of natural law. But in doing so, by assuming the principle of non-violence, he avoided the problem of creating markets, the costs to people of having done so. And instead, by circumventing the natural law of violence ended up advocating a religion of property. Hoppe improved this line of thinking by developing private institutions that provided public goods, and reinforcing the concept of natural law, by the ARgumentation Ethic which purportedly demonstrates that property is natural to man. But these methods are flawed because they start with non-violence and trade, rather than the human capacity for violence and fraud, and the necessity of building and creating markets. In that sense, while anarchists have made innovations ( monarchic inter-temporal incentives, private insurance institutions ) they have failed to provide an answer for advances in abstract forms of property, and as such are providing solutions that are regressive as did Marx. A market is a joint stock company that was invested in by the fraternal order of soldiers who then collected fees for their service in creating that market. Merchants enter the market by registering products such that they meet the market criteria so that the shareholders experience an appreciation in value. The common people gain access to the market by respecting property, which is a material forgone opportunity cost. Everyone pays, and everyone profits from market participation. The history of economic thought is the history of demonizing monarchs for the purpose of transferring control of the market from it’s military founders, to the vendors – the middle classes. This demonization is nothing but falsehood. As it turns out, kings were kinder to their populations than are republican and democratic governments. But because of this demonization, the causal origin of civilization, of cities, of markets, of prosperity, and of western culture itself, is obscured by the rhetoric of demonizing the nobility who created this culture under which we prosper. Despite it’s variety of logical strengths, libertarian philosophy contains a number of errors, the most influential of which is in confusing the role of government as necessarily social in nature or necessarily defensive in nature, or a tool of class exploitation, versus the historical and causal origin of government as a protector and regulator of markets.

    [callout]Markets are the primary social institution of post tribal man. Governments have no reason for existence outside of Markets[/callout]

    Markets are the primary social institution of post tribal man. Governments have no reason for existence outside of Markets. Government IS a market function, because the purpose of government is determining the rules of the market which funds the government. Trade exists without government, but markets do not. Advanced markets for the trading of abstracts do not. All forms of property beyond portable personal property (several property) require registration, and rules for exchange in the market. The primary difference between the concept of trade and the concept of market is one of anonymity — whereby the market operator places some guarantee on the products offered so that the market’s shareholders can create a competitive advantage against other markets, and to reduce the cost of conflict administration within the market.

    [callout]The difference in cultures is simply in the definition of ownership of different forms of property that they permit in their markets.[/callout]

    The difference in cultures is simply in the definition of ownership of different forms of property that they permit in their markets. And these differences are material: the more granular the property the more liquidity and velocity it produces, and the greater the division of knowledge and labor that is possible. This culture of Market-Making is one of the three causal differences for western civilization versus the central and eastern models. (The other two differences being military tactics that required enfranchisement – leading to debate, reason an science, and IQ distribution mixed with resource and transport availability.). Libertarians confuse fear of abuses by the government with the necessity of constraining the government to the maintenance of the rules of the market, and the value in those rules as a means of increasing the productivity of the market and their yield from that market. Libertarians have abandoned the problem of managing the market, and therefore have become a religious institution not a political institution. That is the difference between religion and politics: the market and the absence of it. Because in large part, neither institution has been rational, only practical. Conservatives lack the ability to articulate their concepts in other than moral terms. Libertarians do significantly better. But both systems of thought are lacking in an understanding of what they argue for. Libertarians, despite being a minority selling a minority philosophy, seek to create a nation governed by a ‘religion of property’ in order to exit the influence of government. When in fact, government is responsible for making the market, and libertarians should lobby for additional rules to limit the state. Not limiting the state to social activities of dubious non-market nature, but to it’s role in regulating the market and evolutionary increases in defining the ever expanding set of objects and options we refer to as property, and which we frequently trade, so that we, as a people, maintain a competitive advantage against other markets. The problems with the anarchic movement are substantive in that they do not account for market-enhancing asymmetries, versus market-harming asymmetries. In other words, they are advocating the ‘buyer beware’ ethic of the Bazaar, rather than the ‘seller responsibility’ that is required of participants in the Market. This is not an advantage to the shareholders (citizens).

    [callout title=Trade and Market Are Different Systems][anarchists] are advocating the ‘buyer beware’ ethic of the Bazaar, rather than the ‘seller responsibility’ that is required of participants in the Market. This is not an advantage to the shareholders (citizens).[/callout]

    The problem with our institutions is that they do not separate redistributive efforts from market efforts. Libertarians (of which I am a member of the group of theorists) would be better served by abandoning our rhetoric of monarchic criticism, and instead develop a language and metaphysics such that we can provide an institutional response to an increasingly complex world in which we must register, trade and police a market of increasingly vast and complex products and services, so that we may maintain our competitive advantage over the rest of the world.

    [callout title=Separation Of Church And State]The problem with our institutions is that they do not separate redistributive efforts from market efforts.[/callout]

    And abandon luddite religions of all sorts. That includes all forms of the Church of Limited Government and Church of Unlimited Government. Instead, a rational epistemology can be applied if we simply look at the material problem of building and maintaining markets in an increasing division of knowledge and labor, where most of our inventions are abstractions that like large numbers, are beyond the ability of our perceptions. That is the one and only important function of government, after territorial defense and the policing of trade routes. And the implementation of rationalism is in separating our institutions such that redistribution is held by one house, and market regulation by another. Further, our separation of banking, including the currency, credit and interest (which has replaced both our religions and our code of laws as our primary means of maintaining social order) is insufficient for the current state of our division of knowledge and labor. That system of institutions and approach to analysis is Post-Rothbardian libertarianism. And it is the only rational alternative to encroaching socialism. Libertarianism was hijacked by Rothbard simply because Hayek, Parsons and Mises failed. And both Rothbard and Hoppe created extraordinary epistemological and institutional value with their research program. But they have failed, as did the libertarians, and the classical liberals, and the conservatives before them, to create a system of institutions capable of providing an alternative to the anti-market anti-civilization sentiments and philosophy of socialism by failing to articulate the causal purpose of government as market maker, and to create institutions that expand and evolve along with the objects that we exchange in that market. And that is your solution membership in A Church: the articulated causality of the market and it’s institutions and the purpose of government communicated by the technique which we call ‘reason’.