Curt Doolittle

Theme: Incentives

  • CAPLAN’S DISHONEST REDISTRIBUTIVE ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF OPEN IMMIGRATION Caplan’s

    CAPLAN’S DISHONEST REDISTRIBUTIVE ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF OPEN IMMIGRATION

    Caplan’s argument does not account for costs. He’s wrong. Always has been. This argument is just an extension of Cosmopolitan justification for identitarian incorporation of subgroups into host countries. It is simple literary and economic obscurantism that seeks to ignore the costs of heterogeneity on a population. In an homogenous population under universal absolute nuclear families, we still see high costs of relocation of individuals to changes in capital centers that doe NOT offset the increases in productivity – which are merely artifacts of the change in prices as demand increases in geographies.

    In homogenous populations containing ANF families, it takes time for the introduction of heterogeneous forces to play out, but temporary increases do simply to increases in demand for consumption due to relocation are not increases in production, and those costs have to measured against the long term decline of the trust as well as socialistic costs of incorporating lower trust groups into the society.

    Trust and homogeneity of high trust, is the most expensive capital to create. And heterogeneity consumes that capital asset – rapidly.

    The fallacy of the economic benefit of immigration is that there is no cost to norms. If high trust ethics were fully codified in law, then we could enforce high trust ethics at low cost. However, the immigration of low trust peoples has produced precisely the erosion of our constitution and our liberties that the protestants predicted would happen.

    The majority does not desire liberty. The minority desires liberty. And the aristocratic (noble) minority imposed high trust ethics upon the northern european peoples by force. It was that forcible imposition that caused the high trust society, plus the restoration of science, that resulted in european miracle – the only people to possess liberty.

    I don’t want to say Caplan is a LIAR, so much as engaged in intentional deception, but he’s no better than the progressives who abuse statistics to tout changes family incomes instead of individual incomes.

    Its sort of like his arguments as to why he’s not an austrian. They’re just word games. (There is no difference between the argument for prices and incentives. Obverse and Reverse of the same concept.)

    My purpose is to promote my genes, even at the expense of others genes. If we can cooperate while I do that then that’s fine. But if we cannot cooperate while I do that, then there is no point in cooperation.

    We all demonstrate our time preference. That’s mine. That’s everyone other than W.E.I.R.D’s – who are demonstrably suicidal.

    You don’t get to determine what my preference is. Thats totalitarian. If you dictate my preferences that is by definition not a state of liberty. I agree to cooperate if it’s beneficial to my ends, but not if it is not. That is all that can be said.

    I don’t subscribe to the leftist proposal of Rawls, nor the left libertarian position of open borders. I subscribe to the aristocratic proposal that if cooperation is beneficial to me and mine then we should cooperate, but if it’s not then no. I don’t know what’s libertarian about favoring dysgenics.

    I mean, why should I squander my earnings through redistribution? Why should I squander my culture’s high trust norms through redistribution? And why should I squander my genes through dysgenic redistribution?

    I mean, if you’re a libertarian and you claim to have rights to your earnings, then why do you only have rights to your earnings and not the right to your other forms of capital?

    I can spend my inheritance too. That isn’t an increase in production, that’s just rapid destruction of accumulated capital.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 13:59:00 UTC

  • DIVIDENDS AND TRANSPARENCY? Don’t dividends solve the problem of creating transp

    DIVIDENDS AND TRANSPARENCY?

    Don’t dividends solve the problem of creating transparent data better than taxation does, because the incentives are aligned? Taxes distort information gathering, distort incentives, and distort the economy. Don’t dividends do the opposite? I’d rather have dividends and no corporate taxation on dividends, and taxation only upon personal income, if I were interested in providing informational transparency without the tragic incentives of corporate taxation.

    —“Taxation is not only a way of requiring all citizens to contribute to the financing of public expenditures and projects and to distribute the tax burden as fairly as possible; it is also useful for establishing classifications and promoting knowledge as well as democratic transparency.”—

    Piketty, Thomas (2014-03-10). Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Kindle Locations 297-299). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-24 13:08:00 UTC

  • SANCTIONS I am not getting good info here. But do I correctly interpret that the

    SANCTIONS

    I am not getting good info here. But do I correctly interpret that the threat of further sanctions on Russia are working? I mean, the States is planning to cut Russia out of the international finance system. It will be nearly impossible for Russian firms to do business without the very high cost of circumventing that system (doing everything in cash with people who will accept their currency). Russian growth has dropped to zero in just two months.

    I mean, if I’m Putin, and I think I can do it quickly, I take the hit and do it anyway, and apologize afterward. But if the Ukrainian’s run a civil war and it’s protracted, then it’s pretty unlikely that the Russian government can tolerate the economic isolation, without severely affecting the citizens.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-18 07:18:00 UTC

  • GENDER RELATIONS : OFFSPRING VS TRIBES Women are more comfortable with free ridi

    GENDER RELATIONS : OFFSPRING VS TRIBES

    Women are more comfortable with free riding and with charity, and men are extremely conservative about resources. Women happily sacrifice for their children. Men cautiously sacrifice for their tribe. Women advocate for their children regardless of their merits, while men are more parsimonious because they desire the strongest tribe. For men, a woman and his children are just the smallest possible tribe that he can lead. For a woman, it is very risky, especially in the ignorance of youth, to choose just one man upon which to risk her future.

    While men cannot articulate this set of intuitions and strategies, women often confuse the difference in evolutionary strategies between men and women. And particularly the difference between a woman’s offspring, and a man’s tribe.

    I’ve seen so many marriages where the woman expects the man to have the same interest toward her and the children, as she has. And there are some men who approach a woman’s sacrifice. But for the majority of us, it is a very bad investment. And with the state making it impossible for us to save for retirement, given our shorter productive life spans, and greater specialization, and greater variation – it’s now an extremely bad idea to engage in marriage.

    Marriage is an artificial construct. For a man, he is best off if he trades productivity (no longer protection) and affection for as many women as he can get attention from. And a woman’s best interest is to form a group with other women and select from different men what she wants and needs. This is how we evolved: everyone having sex with everyone else – some of which was for bond building, and some of which was for the purpose of reproduction.

    Any society that does not maintain at least the nuclear family will be dominated an exterminated by those that do.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-04-09 08:05:00 UTC

  • SMART –“Most opinions we find stupid or insane are usually just the result of t

    SMART

    –“Most opinions we find stupid or insane are usually just the result of the opinion-holder discounting the value of a cost we find to be expensive. I need to remember this before I start hating on people for their stupid, insane beliefs.”–

    Stephanie McPeak Herman

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

  • Why Are Libertarians Less Sensitive To The Transaction Costs Of Immoral And Unethical Actions?

    (the most important bit of philosophy that you will read today) [A]s intelligence increases morality increases, and concern about morality decreases. The reasons are still being debated, but the general theory is that (a) smarter people can identify dishonesty more easily, and (b) smarter people can rely upon wit and cunning as a competitive advantage so that they have less trouble competing honestly. To which I would like to add (c) that the higher you are in the food chain the more abstract property you are dealing with and therefore the harder it is to steal it. Libertarians tend to be very bright. But libertarians also test as abnormally insensitive to moral questions. The connection between the two facts is pretty obvious. We libertarians are less concerned with immorality because it’s easy for us to defend against. I don’t take the position that we’re less moral. Only that immorality is less of a challenge for us SO WE DISCOUNT THE TRANSACTION COSTS of immoral activity, whereas everyone else does NOT discount those transaction costs. This explains why libertarians are more easily fooled by Rothbardian ethics than conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) and progressives (socialists). The moral economy is less valuable to us than to conservatives and progressives. We discount the cost of immoral and unethical behavior. But if we want to build a polity – the fact is: we’re wrong. Those transaction costs increase as intelligence and general knowledge decrease. And so it’s just not rational for a body of people to adopt Rothbardian ethics. They aren’t moral ENOUGH for suppression of immoral and unethical behavior, and the high transaction costs imposed upon people who must deal with pervasive immoral and unethical behavior. [P]rivate property is what remains when a polity suppresses all free riding: violence, theft, fraud, cheating, externalizing, privatizing, conspiracy, corruption and extortion. And people will not grant one another private property rights and reduce demand for the state unless suppression of free riding (immoral and unethical behavior) is present FIRST. Curt Doolittle

  • Why Are Libertarians Less Sensitive To The Transaction Costs Of Immoral And Unethical Actions?

    (the most important bit of philosophy that you will read today) [A]s intelligence increases morality increases, and concern about morality decreases. The reasons are still being debated, but the general theory is that (a) smarter people can identify dishonesty more easily, and (b) smarter people can rely upon wit and cunning as a competitive advantage so that they have less trouble competing honestly. To which I would like to add (c) that the higher you are in the food chain the more abstract property you are dealing with and therefore the harder it is to steal it. Libertarians tend to be very bright. But libertarians also test as abnormally insensitive to moral questions. The connection between the two facts is pretty obvious. We libertarians are less concerned with immorality because it’s easy for us to defend against. I don’t take the position that we’re less moral. Only that immorality is less of a challenge for us SO WE DISCOUNT THE TRANSACTION COSTS of immoral activity, whereas everyone else does NOT discount those transaction costs. This explains why libertarians are more easily fooled by Rothbardian ethics than conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) and progressives (socialists). The moral economy is less valuable to us than to conservatives and progressives. We discount the cost of immoral and unethical behavior. But if we want to build a polity – the fact is: we’re wrong. Those transaction costs increase as intelligence and general knowledge decrease. And so it’s just not rational for a body of people to adopt Rothbardian ethics. They aren’t moral ENOUGH for suppression of immoral and unethical behavior, and the high transaction costs imposed upon people who must deal with pervasive immoral and unethical behavior. [P]rivate property is what remains when a polity suppresses all free riding: violence, theft, fraud, cheating, externalizing, privatizing, conspiracy, corruption and extortion. And people will not grant one another private property rights and reduce demand for the state unless suppression of free riding (immoral and unethical behavior) is present FIRST. Curt Doolittle

  • The Future Of Economics And Cooperative Science

    (interesting) [I] doubt that economics will ever evolve to be predictive, since we would adapt to any prediction. I do not doubt that economics will evolve to be almost universally descriptive. or at least sufficiently so that further inquiry won’t provide additional knowledge about mankind and human behavior. I **DO** believe that we can construct a science of COOPERATION instead of a science of ‘economics’. I think this categorization of cooperation as economic has taken root, and it may be impossible to fix at this point. However, the study of economic activity is the use of easily recorded economic data to capture the demonstrated behavior and preferences of human beings better than any other form of test can possibly do. But the science we are constructing through economics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, is the the science of COOPERATION. That science, for all intents and purposes has yielded, and will yield, only one fundamental set of principles. And that single fundamental set of principles will undoubtably be categorized as what we USED to call, “POLITICAL ECONOMY”. [B]ecause all human cooperation requires institutions that facilitate organization of invention, production, distribution and consumption by voluntary means, while at the same time prohibiting free riding in all it’s forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest. As such, the science of cooperation, including:

    • The Future Of Economics And Cooperative Science

      (interesting) [I] doubt that economics will ever evolve to be predictive, since we would adapt to any prediction. I do not doubt that economics will evolve to be almost universally descriptive. or at least sufficiently so that further inquiry won’t provide additional knowledge about mankind and human behavior. I **DO** believe that we can construct a science of COOPERATION instead of a science of ‘economics’. I think this categorization of cooperation as economic has taken root, and it may be impossible to fix at this point. However, the study of economic activity is the use of easily recorded economic data to capture the demonstrated behavior and preferences of human beings better than any other form of test can possibly do. But the science we are constructing through economics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, is the the science of COOPERATION. That science, for all intents and purposes has yielded, and will yield, only one fundamental set of principles. And that single fundamental set of principles will undoubtably be categorized as what we USED to call, “POLITICAL ECONOMY”. [B]ecause all human cooperation requires institutions that facilitate organization of invention, production, distribution and consumption by voluntary means, while at the same time prohibiting free riding in all it’s forms: criminal, unethical, immoral, conspiratorial and conquest. As such, the science of cooperation, including:

      • WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS LESS SENSITIVE TO THE TRANSACTION COSTS OF IMMORAL AND UNET

        WHY ARE LIBERTARIANS LESS SENSITIVE TO THE TRANSACTION COSTS OF IMMORAL AND UNETHICAL ACTIONS?

        (the most important bit of philosophy that you will read today)

        As intelligence increases morality increases, and concern about morality decreases. The reasons are still being debated, but the general theory is that (a) smarter people can identify dishonesty more easily, and (b) smarter people can rely upon wit and cunning as a competitive advantage so that they have less trouble competing honestly. To which I would like to add (c) that the higher you are in the food chain the more abstract property you are dealing with and therefore the harder it is to steal it.

        Libertarians tend to be very bright. But libertarians also test as abnormally insensitive to moral questions. The connection between the two facts is pretty obvious. We libertarians are less concerned with immorality because it’s easy for us to defend against. I don’t take the position that we’re less moral. Only that immorality is less of a challenge for us SO WE DISCOUNT THE TRANSACTION COSTS of immoral activity, whereas everyone else does NOT discount those transaction costs.

        This explains why libertarians are more easily fooled by Rothbardian ethics than conservatives (aristocratic egalitarians) and progressives (socialists). The moral economy is less valuable to us than to conservatives and progressives. We discount the cost of immoral and unethical behavior.

        But if we want to build a polity – the fact is: we’re wrong. Those transaction costs increase as intelligence and general knowledge decrease. And so it’s just not rational for a body of people to adopt Rothbardian ethics. They aren’t moral ENOUGH for suppression of immoral and unethical behavior, and the high transaction costs imposed upon people who must deal with pervasive immoral and unethical behavior.

        Private property is what remains when a polity suppresses all free riding: violence, theft, fraud, cheating, externalizing, privatizing, conspiracy, corruption and extortion. And people will not grant one another private property rights and reduce demand for the state unless suppression of free riding (immoral and unethical behavior) is present FIRST.

        Curt Doolittle

        Source date (UTC): 2014-04-02 15:33:00 UTC