Curt Doolittle

Theme: Incentives

  • MASTERCARD AND BITCOIN Hierarchy of business is Amex->Visa->MC->Check-Cashing bu

    MASTERCARD AND BITCOIN

    Hierarchy of business is Amex->Visa->MC->Check-Cashing businesses. With MC having all the ‘low rent’ customers, and check cashing services having the … lowest.

    Now, why not build a MC ‘wallet’ and charge simple transaction costs for BTC’s – just for the convenience of processing the transactions?

    Because they assume that it would eat into their business. But if you thought like a check cashing company you’d understand that people evolve through the credit cycle. And that today’s payday loan and check cashing customer is tomorrow’s credit customer. in fact, this is the optimum business model for them.

    BTC transactions are zero risk for the vendor. It’s merely a transaction processing cost. That transaction processing can still be a profitable ADDITION to the existing business (i’d carry a MC product if it handled BTC). And by and large, people will buy btc with credit.

    I’d like to see people paid in BTC at the low wage end, so that the burden of the financial system is lessened for them. At present it’s an absurd burden – and it’s a trap for them as well, that they cannot easily get out of.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-19 11:32:00 UTC

  • RENT SEEKING AND JAPAN (now, I’m all in favor of rent seeking in an extended fam

    RENT SEEKING AND JAPAN

    (now, I’m all in favor of rent seeking in an extended family – that’s a choice. but I”m not in favor of rents on my family by competing families.)

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-18 08:45:00 UTC

  • FWIW: We human beings operate by status signals more so than any other thing tha

    FWIW: We human beings operate by status signals more so than any other thing that we covet.

    Loss aversion is a strong instinct. loss aversion by ‘theft, cheating and free riding’ is stronger still. But of all the things we covet most, and and are most adverse to loss, status is the greatest – often more so than our kin.

    It is the redistribution of earned status that produces agitation on one end, and a reaction to the relative lack of status at the other end.

    Progressives use the best of all worlds: the don’t bear many children, they earn high incomes, and they obtain their status using other people’s money.

    Whereas a middle class business owner, or upper middle class professional, cannot devote his earnings to increasing the number of his children, increasing his comfort in retirement, nor transferring his accumulated wealth to his family.

    Meanwhile, others gain status merely by appropriating and redistributing the product of his efforts.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-14 11:36:00 UTC

  • Good Marketing requires that we: 1) stay on message; 2) stay in brand, and; 3) s

    Good Marketing requires that we:

    1) stay on message;

    2) stay in brand, and;

    3) stay visible.

    Good Ideology is mostly good marketing. And good marketing is expensive.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-14 05:22:00 UTC

  • Improving Hoppe's Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Improving Hoppe’s Origin Of Human Cooperation

    –“Human cooperation is the result of three factors: the differences among men and/or the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production; the higher productivity achieved under the division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (the exclusive control of every man over his own body and his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient isolation or aggression, plunder and domination; and the human ability to recognize this latter fact. “– Hoppe – “NATURAL ORDER, THE STATE, AND THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM”

    [I]’m going to correct Hans a bit here by saying that human cooperation is the result of these properties:

    • 1) the differences in abilities among men.
      2) the geographical distribution of nature-given factors of production.
      3) the local structure of production: the division of knowledge and labor.
      4) the local structure of the family and inheritance rights.
      5) the distribution of property rights between the individual, family, group and the commons.
      6) the degree of suppression of, and intolerance for, free riding both in and out of family.
      7) calculative, cooperative technology available for economic signaling and coordination. (objective truth, numbers, money, prices, interest, writing, contract, and accounting).
      8) The use of formal institutions to perpetuate these constraints.
      9) The competition from groups with alternate structures of production, family, inheritance, property rights, free riding, cooperative technologies, and formal institutions.
      10) The recognition of these facts. (I question whether this last one is true.)

    CONVERTING HOPPE FROM CONTINENTAL TO EMPIRICAL [T]he more work I do the more I come to see my work as converting hoppe’s Continental arguments into Anglo Empirical arguments. Just like Hoppe converted Rothbard’s Cosmopolitan arguments into more rigorous continental language. [callout]The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will.[/callout] I think a few people have caught on to what I mean when I say that Hoppe got most everything right. He just didn’t get to the CAUSE of liberty. He was able to deduce all the applications of property rights, but not it’s cause. I got to its cause. The organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms, and the grant of property rights reciprocally to those who thusly applied their violence. Understanding the cause changes our tactic in obtaining and maintaining liberty. You don’t appeal for it. You demand it. If your demands aren’t met you take it. The vast majority of people do not desire liberty – they desire only consumption. They have the numbers. They always will. Property rights are a moral conspiracy so to speak.

  • Curt, I have read this guy on and off since the 1990’s on the investment side. H

    Curt, I have read this guy on and off since the 1990’s on the investment side. His models were spot on for the end of the 2000 market, tech bust and, later, economic declines when he was at Princeton Economics. However, he went to jail in a murky case where he, along with Republic Bank, was accused by the SEC of misdeeds against the Japanese. He fought it as his own attorney (claiming Republic was blaming him for their losses) and lost and is now out. I cannot figure out now if he is a genius or completely delusional. However, I think you will enjoy this piece he just published.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-05 14:57:00 UTC

  • Is Social Security A Ponzi Scheme?

    Contrary to rhetoric it is, indeed, a ponzi scheme, which is defined as early entrants are paid by later entrants under the assumption that there will always be enough new entrants to pay for each person exiting. 

    It’s not insurance because Insurance works by a lot of people giving a little bit of money to an investor who invests the money at a reasonable rate of return, then pays out to some small percent of people in the event that a few of them actually need a lot of money.   That is not the case, since all of us both enter and leave.

    When social security was conceived, people didn’t live very long. It was in fact, at that time, insurance.  But as we have lived much longer, we are confronted with the problem that old people are still not very useful in the work force, and it’s hard for them to work at even small jobs as they age, and we have smaller population growth and a smaller population who must sacrifice more and more of their incomes to pay for aged people who live much longer and have very high health care costs.

    To compensate for this problem, western countries have brought in large numbers of immigrants in order to increase the number of working people, But this has in turn created cultural friction as the only people that can be brought into the country are largely the poor from the third world, who are much less productive per person than the prior generations. 

    The counter argument is that people should be forced to save, even if we redistributed money via taxation to people’s savings accounts. Then this money could be insured by the government, and people could actually plan.

    There are numerous arithmetic arguments to suggest that it is possible to perpetuate this scheme indefinitely, but they are heavily biased with assumptions. The reason is that most of our economic data starts with the postwar era, And economic data before that time, with the colonial period. And it is not certain that our country can remain competitive.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-Social-Security-a-Ponzi-scheme

  • Is Social Security A Ponzi Scheme?

    Contrary to rhetoric it is, indeed, a ponzi scheme, which is defined as early entrants are paid by later entrants under the assumption that there will always be enough new entrants to pay for each person exiting. 

    It’s not insurance because Insurance works by a lot of people giving a little bit of money to an investor who invests the money at a reasonable rate of return, then pays out to some small percent of people in the event that a few of them actually need a lot of money.   That is not the case, since all of us both enter and leave.

    When social security was conceived, people didn’t live very long. It was in fact, at that time, insurance.  But as we have lived much longer, we are confronted with the problem that old people are still not very useful in the work force, and it’s hard for them to work at even small jobs as they age, and we have smaller population growth and a smaller population who must sacrifice more and more of their incomes to pay for aged people who live much longer and have very high health care costs.

    To compensate for this problem, western countries have brought in large numbers of immigrants in order to increase the number of working people, But this has in turn created cultural friction as the only people that can be brought into the country are largely the poor from the third world, who are much less productive per person than the prior generations. 

    The counter argument is that people should be forced to save, even if we redistributed money via taxation to people’s savings accounts. Then this money could be insured by the government, and people could actually plan.

    There are numerous arithmetic arguments to suggest that it is possible to perpetuate this scheme indefinitely, but they are heavily biased with assumptions. The reason is that most of our economic data starts with the postwar era, And economic data before that time, with the colonial period. And it is not certain that our country can remain competitive.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-Social-Security-a-Ponzi-scheme

  • CHARLES HUGH SMITH ON THE NET EFFECT: RUSSIA’S LOSS OF MARKET (Smith is one of t

    CHARLES HUGH SMITH ON THE NET EFFECT: RUSSIA’S LOSS OF MARKET

    (Smith is one of the few analysts I look up to. He finds the demographic and economic reasons for everything.)

    “The net effect will be the same as that of china’s strategic abuse of rare-earth metals, (and russias 2009 abuse of gas markets): rare earth metals are not rare or from china now, and the rest of the world has developed alternatives to Russian oil and gas.”

    The world does not operate by empires any longer. It operates by economic cooperation and coordination.

    I want a strong Russia. I’d love a new Russian empire. But only if it suppresses corruption as a means of ENTICING membership, rather than using VIOLENCE and DECEPTION as a means of forcing it.

    (I’m telling you. Putin was f_king STUPID as hell. )

    The only reason Russia is not as poor as Ukraine is oil and gas. An the producer just killed it’s market. Set us back 50 freaking years. What a moron. For nothing. FOr nothing at all. All he had to be was HONEST and say “hey, we got a lot here, and we’re not losing it” so please tolerate our strategic interests not being taken by NATO.”

    Apologize profusely. But just say the truth. It would have been FINE. He’d have INCREASED his world political capital rather than ruining all he’s worked for.

    At least he restored 10% of the value of the Ukrainian currency.

    Source date (UTC): 2014-03-04 14:58:00 UTC