Curt Doolittle

Theme: Incentives

  • Consumer Capitalism? Or Is It Consumer Credit-Ism?


    [W]hy do we refer to our voluntary organization of production as Capitalism when that era ended at least half a century ago –  and call it Consumer Cedit-ism instead.

    Ukrainians are poor because they lack credit. Capitalism is a different social class problem altogether. And by historical standards we don’t really have any capitalists any longer – only people with enough trust to accumulate a lot if credit.  Our rich aren’t really rich enough to do much of anything other than try desperately to stay rich against all odds.

    In the 18th and 19th century, It was easy to amass a little capital and produce consumer goods.

    It was a lot harder to distribute consumer credit to all.  

    Consumer Credit-ism is how we operate our society – capitalism died with the end of the conversion of people from the farm.


  • CONSUMER CAPITALISM? OR IS IT CONSUMER CREDIT-ISM? Why do we refer to it as capi

    CONSUMER CAPITALISM? OR IS IT CONSUMER CREDIT-ISM?

    Why do we refer to it as capitalism when that era ended half a century ago and call it credit-ism instead.

    Ukrainians are poor because they lack credit. Capitalism is a different class problem altogether. And by historical standards we don’t really have any capitalists any longer – inly people with enough trust to accumulate a lot if credit.

    It was easy to amass a little capital and produce consumer goods.

    It was a lot harder to distribute credit to all.

    Consumer credit-ism is how we operate – capitalism died with the end of the conversion of people from the farm.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-08 09:44:00 UTC

  • HOW DO WE OBTAIN LIBERTY? THE ANSWER IS IN TRANSACTION COSTS The answer to the q

    HOW DO WE OBTAIN LIBERTY? THE ANSWER IS IN TRANSACTION COSTS

    The answer to the question of how we obtain liberty is found in transaction costs: At what point are local transaction costs sufficiently suppressed that the remote and explicit costs of a state, no longer preferable to the local costs of everyday existence?

    You would think that this would have been OBVIOUS to a group of philosophers who depend upon economics, and lay claim to the superiority of economics as the means of achieving prosperity, and therefore upon prosperity for the justification of their arguments.

    But instead they get lost in an endless circular discussion of ‘morality’ – in a remembrance-ritual for a church that has abandoned us to universalism and mysticism.

    Whereas, morality is reducible to the evolutionary necessity of prohibiting the imposition of costs on others.

    And where transaction costs determine the demand for an authority in the form of a state to either impose an order, or to prohibit retaliation, or both.

    And where rule of law reliant upon property-en-toto, provide means of resolution of conflicts (retaliation), and therefore a reduction of demand for an authority to impose order, or prohibit retaliation – the state.

    So the only question is, how much suppression of the imposition of costs is necessary for the rational choice between transaction costs of criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial actions, and the payment to an authority that imposes order, metes punishments, and prevents retaliation?

    The answer is, that you’re going to have a society that looks a lot more like classical liberalism than one that looks like anarcho-capitalism.

    In retrospect it’s one of those things that should have been stupidly obvious.

    Apparently the appeal of justifying one’s biases is greater than the appeal of ascertaining necessary causal properties of reality.”

    Justification always rules.

    Curt Doolittle

    Liberty: The Philosophy Of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev Ukraine.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-08 02:41:00 UTC

  • HOW DOES ONE DEFINE THE MARKET (NOT ‘A’ MARKET)? As far as I know the central di

    HOW DOES ONE DEFINE THE MARKET (NOT ‘A’ MARKET)?

    As far as I know the central distinguishing property of the market is incomprehensibility, such that prices form the only available signals.

    Every alternative that I know of constitutes mere trade, not a market.

    If it isn’t anonymous and complex enough for prices to serve as the only instrument of perception then it doesn’t qualify as a market sufficiently to distinguish the necessary properties of a market from the properties of non market.

    A slave market is indeed a market. It is a market for immoral goods, just like a black market is a market for regulated goods. The morality of the goods and services is immaterial. The only necessary properties of a market are necessary ignorance and therefore a dependence upon prices.

    There are many analogies to a market, most common of which is status signals, mates, information, political influence and favors.

    But the distinguishing features of those analogies to the market is that they are mere trade. Not anonymous speculation based upon prices.

    –“would you say that a local farmer’s market (let’s say kind of a mid-size one, with maybe a few dozen vendors at most) is characterized by the kind of anonymous speculation or epistemic incomprehensibility that you take to be characteristic?”–

    If we describe a hierarchy:

    1) The anonymous price market.

    2) The speculative production market

    3) The opportunistic production market.

    4) An out group barter market.

    5) An in group barter market,

    6) An in group altruistic market,

    Trade is conducted in each of them. The problem is, when we use the term ‘market’, each of these markets consist of different necessary properties that distinguishes it from the next.

    So, yes, I would categorize it as a market but, I not would classify it as an anonymous and speculative market.

    And this is an important difference in properties for obvious reasons.

    So I am a little cautious of reductio ad absurdum definitions – particularly those that fit ideological biases that matt seems to be attempting to steer clear of.

    Or conversely, if we fail to tie market to prices and prices to sufficient information, then I think the consequential deductions invalidate our definition of a market.

    As another series:

    I can expend on my children.

    I can trade affection on speculation of future care.

    I can exchange with friends and neighbors to balance my inventory.

    I can make something for you for a fee.

    I can sell my surplus to friends and neighbors and travelers.

    I can produce entirely on speculation for those that I don’t know.

    I can buy product from producers on speculation of selling.

    … etc.

    As such, what axis does this series represent? What increases with complexity? What decreases with complexity?

    I have less and less information to work with, and become more and more reliant on prices.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-05 14:34:00 UTC

  • I still can’t find a reason why under fiat money, we charge interest on home, co

    I still can’t find a reason why under fiat money, we charge interest on home, condo and apartments constructed and owned by individuals. As far as I know the private mortgage industry is entirely parasitic and is the primary driver of inflation.

    I mean. That’s what it looks like, and I can’t find a competing argument.

    The MMT folks are partly right.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-03 07:44:00 UTC

  • FB, GOOGLE AND THE PROBLEM WITH MAJOR BRAND ADVERTISING You see, Google merely t

    FB, GOOGLE AND THE PROBLEM WITH MAJOR BRAND ADVERTISING

    You see, Google merely transferred the money spent on yellow pages to a new medium, that provided, like shareware, free advertising (search results – the white pages), and better placement (yellow pages), and much better placement (advertisement position on the page).

    Now I have no idea why google tolerates all these local (sh_t) yellow page listings other than it generates click money for them at the expense of users, instead of creating a very clear means of searching for local services based upon your address, that is edited as the yellow pages were, that places some demand for legitimacy upon the people making the listings. Because it’s impossible to find almost anything local still. So that seems like a ‘miss’ because it’s a hole someone can hurt them with in the future. (Citysearch was awesome and I still miss it)

    But back to the broader picture, this plan to transform the yellow pages business onto the net was fantastic. However, it did not help attract major brands. Major brands cannot find success on google or Facebook, nor can these platforms be used to create local draws – events.

    Next, because they were designed for consumers, it’s very hard for major brands to use these platforms to advertise to businesses that actually want to see those ads. And yes, there are things that businesses want to subscribe to. If I could see the advertising equivalent of Pinterest, as a user, and select what promises

    Now, I’m living in a world where I see mobile as a bit of a misallocation of capital that will come to an end like the housing boom. (or the iPad era). It’s only interesting because like the era where americans immigrated germans into the midwest or the gold rush era in California, or the current migration of Chinese out of the serfdom of rice cultivation.

    So I’m giving some thought to a more static world than we have seen for the past two decades.

    And I’m more interested (as I have been for some time) in big brands, able to sell complex value propositions rather than trying to get attention from the consumer with A.D.D. from overstimulation.

    Now, if we had very detailed profiles on individuals, even if you couldn’t see their names, and you could publish Pinterest-style information (Rich I mean), as a major brand, I would think that would be interesting. I mean, we have all these trivial little publications that try to reach out to people in industries. What if that was always available to them like a separate tab within Facebook?

    We don’t want interruptions. But we all like diversions. And advertising property constructed can be a great diversion.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-02 10:11:00 UTC

  • THE INCENTIVES THAT LIMIT THE ABILITY OF THE ACADEMY TO PRODUCE TRUTHFUL PROPOSI

    THE INCENTIVES THAT LIMIT THE ABILITY OF THE ACADEMY TO PRODUCE TRUTHFUL PROPOSITIONS

    There are categories of problems you cannot solve within the academy. The academy is hostile to many of them. Just as the church was hostile to categories of problems and the ideas that solved them. Just as the state is hostile to categories of problems and the ideas that solved them. In the case of the church and the state, they have adopted the mantra of entrepreneurial class without grasping its limits: we must serve customers, however we may not produce externalities. Both academy and state, which possess international rather than regional scope seek the best customers, whereas church as local franchises sought the best deals on behalf of their investors (consumers).

    This contradiction of incentives was caused by the enlightenment fallacy of the island people (the British – my people) and is why they divorced from the german civilization.

    It was a very profitable means of suicide.

    We cannot look at the anglo value system as ‘good’, we can only look at the anglo empirical methods in philosophy, science, commerce, and law as good. The german method is false,but the values are ‘good’. The cosmopolitan values and method are bad and false.

    CULTURE………..STRATEGY……………..METHOD……..

    British………………False(Suicidal)…………True (ratio-empirical)

    German……………True(Optimum)…………False (rationalism)

    Jewish……………..False(Cancerous)……..False (pseudoscientific)

    The problem is that the germans, once conquered, adopted enough of the British strategy, and the jewish strategy, while they have been occupied in the postwar anglo era, that they are acting suicidally as well.

    The only way to fix this problem is to re-nationalize liberalism.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-11-02 05:06:00 UTC

  • Kirill says to me” the secret to all business partnerships is giving your partne

    Kirill says to me” the secret to all business partnerships is giving your partners more.” Which I take as an ESL phrasing. Then he says that it’s about trust. And feeling you can say the truth.

    I think it’s that you try to make your partner happy and successful no matter what -even at your own expense . And you are confident that your parter will do the same.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-29 13:04:00 UTC

  • (from elsewhere) (worth repeating) The problem is one of scale. Families operate

    (from elsewhere) (worth repeating)

    The problem is one of scale. Families operate on non monetary internal signals, but families still operate as an economy. That economy simply makes use of kin selection. But outside of the family it is nearly impossible to construct kin selection without an island or a northern european peninsula.

    ****You cannot break the Dunbar number without an information and incentive system to compensate for exceeding human cognitive ability****

    Cults rely on expensive rituals and verbal contrivance in order to attempt to construct some alternative kinship alliance. This is why only very eccentric cults with high costs of entry and ritual persist beyond the original founders.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-29 11:06:00 UTC

  • Advertising is basically gambling. In the long run, the house (the media) always

    Advertising is basically gambling. In the long run, the house (the media) always wins. But if you don’t play then you can’t get a big win. And companies gamble because big wins pay off.

    Social is an interesting form of gambling. You’re selling the hope of something, and you only have to return as much of the users’s bets in the form of wins, to keep him spending in the hope that he MIGHT get a big win.

    The more tangible the thing you’re selling the more open to discrimination (testing) it is.

    So, if you can sell gambling, it’s better then, say, selling status-symbols like Ferraris and gucci bags and Loubouton shoes. Where you pay for artificial scarcity. And selling signals is better than selling non-status-luxuries, and selling non-status-luxuries is better than selling necessities, and selling necessities is better than selling things you don’t really want (second rate insurance, or a new religion).

    The western ethic though, is to compete on quality.

    Interesting.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-10-28 21:58:00 UTC