Theme: Incentives

ACCUSATION: “DOOLITTLE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND ECONOMICS” (???)

That’s a pretty strange criticism. Well, so, let me clarify a bit.

I know a great deal about the philosophy of science, and what is required of us to make truthful statements in the social and physical sciences. I suspect I know more about this subject than anyone living today. That is not a good thing. It’s a bad thing that more people are not working on the problem of truthfulness – which Kant would have told us was the categorical imperative.

So I work at attacking mathematical platonism, pseudo-rationalism and pseudoscience. I don’t say that what mainstream macro economists claim is false. I state that they’re researching the limits of monetary deception (enabling discretionary rule, and the consumption of accumulated genetic and cultural capital) rather than researching rule of law (in the Chicago school, allowing correction – but not allowing consumption of accumulated capital), and rather than Natural Law (the Austrian school, disallowing any activity other than improvement of information available to each of us in the market). This is the correct framing of the goals of the different branches of economic investigation: discretionary rule (hubris/progressivism), rule of law(pragmatism/liberarianism), natural law(empiricism/conservatism).

So if people don’t know WHY I’m arguing my position they might think I don’t understand economics. But I understand what ends economics can be put to and the reasons to pursue those ends.

Ergo, it’s not that mainstream or Chicago econ is false, so much as it’s immoral and violates natural law, and therefore, violates our incentives to refrain from violence to restore natural law (non imposition of costs).

Now, again, any economist will say (they do) “but that is not what economists do”, in the same way that mathematical platonists will say “truth is a matter for philosophers – as mathematicians we write proofs”.

But both of these statements are kind of absurd when we ask instead ‘but what is the consequence of your following your method rather than changing your method so that you act morally – refraining from negative externalities, instead of immorally ignoring the externalities?

And if your methodology in your discipline does nothing more than justify the spending of accumulated genetic, cultural, and physical capital, then is it in fact a science? Or is it a secular version of religion – obscuring the real intention: fraud.

All of western history is comprised of the use of common judge made law to incrementally suppress direct and external imposition of costs. We civilized man through our law. We domesticated him through incremental suppression.

Not like the Jews and Muslims who created a static law, but as aristocratic egalitarians that separate constantly evolving empirical law from the celebration of myth and ritual and feast that creates trust between us. We evolved fast for a reason. There is nothing fixed in western civilization.

The 19th century, primarily due to the cosmopolitans, attempted to create a new secular religion to replace Judeo-Christianity: to replace magical mysticism with secular pseudoscience.

This is what my work attempts to correct: the restoration of the empirical civilization. just as the English rescued us from the first great deceit: middle eastern mysticism using science. attempt to rescue us from the second great deceit: secular pseudoscience.

The first lie cost us a thousand years of ignorance. We have no need of another dark age brought about by the same technique: a vast lie wrapped in promises of utopia, and sold to us through propagandism. The first time by preacher, pulpit, and parchment, and the second time by Academy and Media using books, radio, and video bringing the pulpit all the way to our living rooms.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.