Theme: Governance

  • I do not see the future as deterministically – other than the obvious large scal

    I do not see the future as deterministically – other than the obvious large scale demographic economic and strategic trends that are all but inescapable – the short and medium term outcome of this ‘world restructuring’ is very hard to predict. There is just too much causal density and too many variables. Would you have imagined that Trump could cause China to replace Xi Jinping and cause the chinese to change strategy in just months? That never occurred to me. Do you see how trump got Europe to take responsibility for Ukraine, while treating Putin with some degree of respect? I mean, this nonsense was almost impossible to forecast – because we tend to extrapolate too few variables with too much confidence when there are other opportunities that can be exploited by novel strategies.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-18 02:29:59 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1935163050979639312

  • Well, I dunno about that. I think that destroying their nuclear capability, all

    Well, I dunno about that. I think that destroying their nuclear capability, all but vaporizing its military, and replacing the leadership will people seeking to build a prosperous Iran, and ending the capacity of Iran to finance the instability in the region …. these are all valuable actions no matter how long it might take a similar regime to recover.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-18 02:21:27 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1935160901948379224

  • RE: US PARTICIPATION IN THE ISRAELI WAR AGAINST IRAN’S ISLAMIST I should have st

    RE: US PARTICIPATION IN THE ISRAELI WAR AGAINST IRAN’S ISLAMIST

    I should have stated this yesterday, but for those who are still thinking about it:

    1) Trump is adamant about ending the Iranian nuclear program. It’s well insulated underground. Israel does not have bunker busters. I am almost positive that the USA will a ‘augment’ the Israeli effort with the use of bunker busters.

    2) The USA will then expand attacks on military facilities until achieving unconditional surrender.

    3) The remaining problem will be the lack of a regime in Iran, and a lack of legitimacy of both Israelis and the USA in any attempt to produce the equivalent of a Marshall Plan of Iranian recovery.

    4) I have no read on King Pahlavi, though it would create international legitimacy, solve the leadership issue quickly, and quicken the formation of a government, without some anti-islamist forces in Iran, building them will be a risk, and risk will persist as it has elsewhere.

    We can easily create another catastrophe like Iraq. Unless the Iranian people can form a government quickly, and purge the remaining islamists.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-18 01:40:57 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1935150710498492717

  • It might be a due to growing up during the nuclear threats of the cold war, but

    It might be a due to growing up during the nuclear threats of the cold war, but every time a country has a chance of achieving freedom, democracy, and rule of law it fills me with spiritual joy.
    I’m old enough to remember the Shah’s iran and the sadness of it’s conquest by the islamists.
    And I have had too many persian expats lament the loss of their country.
    So, war aside, conditions aside, the promise that Persian people may rise from near ashes is inspiring.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 22:25:24 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934376721505276008

  • That’s not true. What’s best for any group is rather obvious based upon their de

    That’s not true. What’s best for any group is rather obvious based upon their demographic distribution and degree of institutional development and degree of economic and intellectual development. The underlying issue is the vast difference in those factors in different races, ethnicities, and states.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 21:49:12 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934367611896398292

  • Please restore the Iranian people by restoring #KingRezaPahlavi to the throne. A

    Please restore the Iranian people by restoring #KingRezaPahlavi to the throne. A monarchy, a republic, a constitution, rule of law, will best serve our distant cousins in Iran.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 20:42:22 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934350793131606072

  • To: Scott Adams( @ScottAdamsSays ) Regarding: “No Kings” 😉 Concept: (First prin

    To: Scott Adams(
    @ScottAdamsSays
    )
    Regarding: “No Kings” 😉
    Concept: (First principles of government)

    Oddly enough:
    – Assuming the persistence of the English Constitution, as the invention of the modern rule-of-law state.

    – The Monarchy has no positiva rights, only negativa (veto), and more importantly, the Monarchy is “above the law in the restoration of the law” – essentially it is the highest court in the land.

    – And the importance of the English constitutional monarchy, (a) the intergenerational interests of monarchies (“Owners”) are superior to the temporal interests of all factions and parties (“Renters”), and as such (b) is the only defense against the tragedy of the commons that universally destroys all rule of law and all participatory governments. (See Hoppe in Democracy, the God that Failed)

    – And the failure of the English constitutional monarchy, is that unlike the US, where the people are sovereign, and the people determine the constitution, and the people’s determination of the constitution is limited to natural law (sovereignty in exchange for duty of reciprocity, truth before face, excellence, and beauty – the UK Parliament is sovereign, not the people, nor the monarchy, nor the constitution. — And until that is ‘fixed’ by a written constitution the monarchy cannot protect the people from the legislature.

    – And in the USA the absence of a Monarchy (Despite Trump’s efforts to mirror one in the restoration of the law), cannot be protected from the courts, the legislature, the bureaucracy, the special interests, and the frauds and deceits of “The talking classes”.

    – In a Republic, under a Constitution, under rule of law of the natural law, under the sovereignty of the people, under the empirical common law of discovered resolution of disputes, and under empirical concurrent legislation creating a market between regions, classes (and now sexes), a Monarchy as a judge of last resort, “is a good thing” because it is a necessary means of compensating for the deterministic failure of the processes of consolidating popular choice that produces deleterious outcomes that cyclically worsen over time. (See Robert Michels addressing the Iron Law of Oligarchy in The Machiavellians by Burnham)

    A scholar of these matters (and there are many apologists, commentaries, and critics but few scholars) will come to the conclusion that we might add to rule of law with monarchy, add to justice with courts, add to governing with legislatures, and add houses of legislature as classes demonstrate agency and ability to bear responsibility – thereby creating a market for the production of commons.

    But almost any fool will discover that one cannot substitute any of the latter for the former. Only continuously divide the labor of governance across larger numbers of people, producing a market for the production of commons regulated by a hierarchy of courts – the last of which is the monarchy as judge of last resort – prior to civil war.

    The problem: small homogenous polities can preserve rule of law and participatory government because of marginal indifference in competitive wants. However, a heterogenous polity does nothing but generate demand for authority to impose costs on one group or another for the benefit of one group or another. As such heterogenous polities serve no purpose but to getherate authoritarianism to compensate for the impossibility of participation.

    Cheers
    Curt Doolittle
    NLI


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 19:36:20 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934334176905638271

  • More confirmation of the long standing observation that women without two or thr

    More confirmation of the long standing observation that women without two or three children are a danger to a democratic polity, rule of law, and the republic that they seek to produce. 😉


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 18:49:18 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934322340063744318

  • THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION (From The Natural Law Volume 4 –

    THE RUDE QUESTIONS OF CONSTITUTIONAL FORMATION
    (From The Natural Law Volume 4 – The Law)

    As conscious beings possessed of degrees of agency, the first question upon which all others depend is why not to suicide? This choice is that of personal philosophy.
    The second question one must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of ethics.
    The third a group must answer is why engage in cooperation rather than free riding, parasitism, and predation? This question is that of politics.

    The answer to all three question is that persistence of the opportunities of existence, of the returns on cooperation, and of the returns on the production of commons, are preferable to engaging in suicide, separation, free riding, parasitism, and predation, and the condition as a victim of the vicissitudes of a nature hostile to all but the gods we imagine.

    For these reasons we organize into families, clans, tribes, nations; and territories, villages, cities, and polities; in the defense of, and for the advancement, of all; and to do so to preserve the returns on cooperation, while increasing proximity and number, and dividing our labors, we produce habits and rules of order consisting of habits, norms, traditions, institutions, processes, rights and obligations, by accident of circumstance, dictate, or choice.  When man makes such rules by choice under sovereignty he produces a contract of processes, rights and obligations because that is all he may.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-15 14:50:35 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1934262265538363565

  • HOW TO SPEAK TO PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS 😉 FRIEND: “I just wanted to tell you that I

    HOW TO SPEAK TO PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS 😉

    FRIEND: “I just wanted to tell you that I will turn it down if yesterday’s political discussion was a little too much…”

    ME: OK. So, you are important to me. That should be pretty obvious. So, I really, really, enjoy appreciate and value everything about you. Including your passion in politics. And I appreciate your position. I perceive it as insight, moral ambition, and honesty.

    1) It’s not “too much” as long as you don’t think I”m the enemy or direct that anger at me. First it would be unjust. Second it would hurt my feelings quite a bit. Third it would impose on our ability to be honest a with one another. And that would be a loss – at least for me. 😉

    2) I have very little insight into how people think of me other than what they tell me, or I can observe. And I work hard to speak to people on their level, with respect, kindness, and an effort to provide them with some benefit. But honestly, it is a chasm to cross. I am not ‘a normie’. One of the reasons I enjoy you is your combination of intelligence and what I see as humility born of conflict avoidance and harmony. You’re a moral person. It’s wonderful. …
    Now, part of why I’m not an normie is that I deeply understand human instinct, intuition, and cognition at the genetic, biological, and operational levels *when it’s reduced to speech*, even if I have trouble at times empathizing with them for the simple reason that I don’t share their frames of reference – or more specifically – it’s hard for me to understand their fears and insecurities unless verbalized, because I simply don’t have them when it comes to ‘simple stuff’ so to speak. (Again, genetics: male systematizing over time vs female empathizing in time.).
    So when you speak of political differences these are feelings and intuitions, but when I speak of them, I do so from a position of nearly exclusive understanding in the field.
    As such people don’t have beliefs so much as instincts that are expressions of their genetics and resulting strategy and they selectively seek information to support those instincts and intuitions, and resulting experiences and accumulated knowledge. From my perspective it is very difficult to *Not Be A Bot*.
    The best we can do is try to understand all sides and determine what is best along the timeline of consequences without overly personalizing it all.

    3) So what I detect in you is moral panic for a whole host of reasons. This is not any attempt to invalidate your instincts, intuitions, feelings, concerns, preferences, beliefs whatsoever. Just the opposite. I understand and agree with them. I simply look for means to make everyone happier than not, even if no one is happy entirely. In other words as a libertarian I always look for a ‘trade’ that would give everyone some kind of win but no one a total loss. This is, after all, as far as I can understand, the only solution in a high trust moral polity capable of democratic participation in a republic under rule of law. Nothing else can or will work without resulting in totalitarianism.

    I love humanity. Partly because I have come to understand that the sexual division of labor converted to a sexual division of cognitive labor converted to a distribution of male and female instinct, intuition, cognition and behavior, between the sexes – meaning the stereotypes are pretty much true but not always true – there are cognitively feminine men and cognitively masculine women even if the stereotype holes. Stereotypes after all, like Iq are the most accurate measurements in theh social sciences.

    A byproduct of my scientific work is ‘mindfulness’ (mental and emotional self regulation) that is usually obtained through religion or ritual or philosophy. Because it’s hard to be angry with people who think differently when you realize that it’s necessary for coexistence and continuous evolution in the face of uncertainty and change.

    Our problem is producing a population capable of making compromises via that understanding within a democratic polity under a republic under rule of law. It is the optimum way of discovering trades that are in everyone’s benefit even if no one is ever fully satisfied. 😉

    Love ya.
    -me.


    Source date (UTC): 2025-06-11 20:54:52 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1932904386893918341