Curt Doolittle

Theme: Incentives

  • ARGUMENT. NOT SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING. BUT I AGREE. AND IF WE CLOSED TH BORDERS I

    http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/08/why-a-living-wage-will-not-help-the-economy/SENTIMENTAL ARGUMENT. NOT SUPPORTED BY ANYTHING. BUT I AGREE. AND IF WE CLOSED TH BORDERS I WOULD SUPPORT IT.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-12 04:00:00 UTC

  • ANSWER NEEDED Although our strategy of blocking worked. PEOPLE WILL SUFFER FOR K

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/is-there-any-point-to-economic-analysis/ANOTHER ANSWER NEEDED

    Although our strategy of blocking worked.

    PEOPLE WILL SUFFER FOR KIN.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-04 15:04:00 UTC

  • AND PROPERTY ARE SYNONYMS – LOVE IS AN INCENTIVE, NOT A NECESSARY REQUIREMENT –

    http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=7337MARRIAGE AND PROPERTY ARE SYNONYMS – LOVE IS AN INCENTIVE, NOT A NECESSARY REQUIREMENT – ROMANTIC NOTIONS TO THE CONTRARY

    The are only two things that distinguish marriage from any other arbitrary relationship for the purpose of securing affection, sex, companionship, love, care-taking, cost-reduction-of-cohabitatin, and a division of labor in child rearing.

    1) PROPERTY: When you marry, you form a corporation with shared assets, and a two person board of directors, from which the state must divide assets upon the disbanding of the corporation. Prior to the institution of private property, you could just marry and un-marry by saying so in public. In fact, the western Celts practiced serial marriage this way until the 19th century, and the European jews until the middle ages. In most primitives societies, women were literally property, but in Europe the church granted women property rights back in the 1200’s. So the need to resolve property disputes increased as the complexity and amount of property increased, and the productivity of individuals, and therefore their ability to obtain and use property increased.

    2) KINSHIP: We have evolved laws to avoid conflict by stating that the other shareholder has certain powers (of attorney) to act as Voluntary Kin in periods of duress, and it that takes precedence over other involuntary Kinship ties: blood relatives. In this sense when we marry we sell ourselves to the corporation as an asset.

    THE STATE AS MONOPOLY

    The state is the arbiter of property disputes – that’s what a state is: a territorial monopoly on the use of violence; and in particular for the use of violence in the resolution of disputes. The moment that you enter into a marriage that produces common property, you force the state into your marriage because only the state can resolve conflicts over property.

    Anyone can form a corporation. A ship captain, a priest, or certain state officials. The formation’s not a state matter. It’s just an exchange like any other exchange. But the state must break it. And if the state must break it then it must of necessity develop criteria for doing so in order to apply a decision that meets the standard of consistent “law” rather than arbitrary judicial decision.

    However, there is no reason that the state must be the arbiter or such disputes. There is no reason churches cannot perform divorces, in which the assets divisions have the force of law. Unfortunately this wold produce two canons of law, and leave the state responsible for resolving appeals, so it would simply result in the state centralizing decision making power again.

    THE OPTION TO MAINTAIN PRIVATE PROPERTY

    However, an easier solution is that if when we marry we do NOT create a corporation and place ourselves and all our assets into it, but instead, maintain each individual’s property separately, and specifically state ownership percentages on anything else that is split now or future, then the only legal issue is the power of attorney to act as one another in financial matters, and to act as primary kin in the event one is incapacitated.

    HISTORY

    The civic and political problem is only that our laws developed as monopolies under control of the state – and even then, largely because the church did not perform divorces and the state wished to intercede in the civil space in order to advance the interests of the feminist political movement on the one hand, and react to the reality that women were becoming active in the work force, earning income, and acquiring real property in sufficient numbers that they required legal peerage to protect them from abuse by rent-seeking males.

    So there is no reason that we must have a monopoly of marriage terms. And there is only one reason that the state should be involved in dissolutions: common property. That is, property of the corporation called the marriage being distributed to various parties in the event of a disbandment of the corporation.

    CRITERIA FOR THREE TYPES OF MARRIAGE

    Further, there is no reason marriages cannot consist of multiple forms, regardless of who makes them.

    1) Corporate Property and Power of Kin

    2) Several property and Power of Kin

    3) Corporate Property without power of kin

    Several Property without power of kin is the normal state of human beings. So that’s the definition of not being married. But one can be in a state of marriage as long as one has either the power of kin (genetic assets) or power of common property (material assets).

    ITS ALL ABOUT PROPERTY

    Love and romance have nothing to do with marriage. You may get married BECAUSE of love and romance and all the other factors. But marriage is a change in control of property – including the self – by authorizing non-kin to act as Kin, and to either pool property or not.

    That it is hard to see the binding power of a marriage having any meaning whatsoever without the pooling of assets is enough of a logical constraint that we can define marriage as a property institution, and nothing more.

    That fact may be painful to admit to ourselves. But marriage is a contract over of property rights, with one of the assets being each other. It is, and always will be. ‘Cause nothing else makes much sense. ‘Cause nothing else enforces fidelity like the loss property.

    Humbling. I know.

    ->Comment in response to this post at Talking Philosophy:

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-03 05:07:00 UTC

  • THE DAMAGE OF WISHES Just reading through todays activity in economics and pieci

    THE DAMAGE OF WISHES

    Just reading through todays activity in economics and piecing together the not obvious fact that our paper of record forms public opinion but is that illusion differs substantially from BBC, Al Jazeera, Russian and Chinese sources more than those sources differ from one another.

    Cowen asks a question about Haiti, and the NYT bias is obvious. But the ideology of wishful thinking bears no resemblance to the reality if Haiti: we have only made it worse. Just like most of what we do makes everything worse.

    Ideological rag.

    The WSJ is the only domestic paper of record that has any correlation with reality. And even that is iffy.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-28 16:42:00 UTC

  • Is Socialism The Same As Capitalism?

    THANK YOU FOR ASKING. I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE

    ( You will, very likely, obtain moralistic, and therefore meaningless answers. I will try to give you the most scientific answer that I can.)

    We have to define some terms here, because your question confuses economic systems (means of allocating control over property) with political systems (means of making decisions).

    1. Socialism: an economic system where the state (a corporation wherein all citizens are equal shareholders) owns all property, means of production, and production is managed by central control.
    2. Social Democracy: a political and economic system that employs representative democracy, but retains limited private use of property, but public claim on the profits of employing that property.
    3. Representative Democracy: a political system where administration is rotated by the election of representatives by one of a various number of allocations of means of determining the winner.
    4. Classical Liberalism : A political and economic system that employs representative democracy, retains private use of property, with limited claims one the profits of employing that property.
    5. Capitalism: an economic system where private property is held entirely by individuals with no corporeal  involuntary claim on the property of the individual or the proceeds from using it.

    THEREFORE
    1. No capitalism and socialism are not the same. They are opposing economic models.
    2. Elected bodies are corruptible under both social democracy and classical liberal democracy, because they are both representative democracies.  And the problem of corruption is a function, not of the economic model, but of the democratic political model used by both systems.
    3. So representative democracy, in the forms of social democracy or classical liberal democracy, and indeed any in form of elected, representative government, will eventually produce similar results. With the only differences determined by (a) how homogenous or heterogeneous the population is, and (b) the structure of the family, from the extended family to the family to the individual.

    MORE DETAILS

    YOUR QUESTION IS ABOUT SOFT CORRUPTION (INFLUENCE)

    The problem with any system of representation is that the incentives of politicians are counter to the voters desires. And our mistake is in creating  institutions that require saints but we people them with ordinary men. THe greeks used lottocracy (random assignment to administrative positions). Others have recommended direct voting for initiatives (like ebay for policy).  Others have recommended economic democracy, where we allocate our tax money ourselves to particular uses. 

    But the more or less redistributive a country is has very little to do with its system of electors. As much as we might wish to think it does.

    PRACTICAL DIFFERENCES IN REDISTRIBUTION

    The practical difference that separates whether these systems of government can be implemented appears to be nothing more than the HOMOGENEITY of the population in terms of kinship, language, and norms. The more homogenous the looser control, the higher the trust and the more redistributive.  The more diverse the more authoritarian, the lower the trust and the less redistributive.

    There are various mathematical estimates of the maximum redistribution possible without the production of negative externalities.  As much as 75%. The willingness to redistribute varies from group to group. in-kin redistribution is quite high. Cross kin redistribution universally meets resistance.

    PRACTICAL DIFFERENCES IN ECONOMICS

    Socialism isn’t possible because (a) economic calculation is impossible, (b) coordination of people without prices is impossible, and (c) incentive to produce is impossible without money and prices. That is why the world has abandoned socialism. It’s an impossible system. It CAN’T work.

    In a division of knowledge and labor capitalism is a logical necessity.  It is impossible to coordinate complex means of production without property, money, prices and incentives. It’s not POSSIBLE. 

    The entire point of capitalism (property rights) is to force voluntary exchange: service of the self thru service of others. “Trade” is voluntary. It is impossible to obtain through trade anything involuntarily, since property and voluntary exchange are dependent terms just as are prices and incentives. It’s a contradiction in terms.

    Complex names like “Catallaxy” have been given to this process of self organization by voluntary exchanges, but self-organizing-systems is the current common terminology.   This is because (see “I Pencil”) the knowledge necessary to coordinate activities, and the incentives necessary to entice people to act in a coordinated fashion, are not possible to organize by other means than self organizing methods, while still adapting to multivariate changes in resources, technologies, demands, and competition.

    There are technical reasons why anarchic capitalism cannot work that are too complex for this context. However, the world has adopted the capitalist economic system almost universally. Except in those countries where oil allows countries to be less a division of labor and more of family feeding from the wealth produced by oil. This combination isn’t possible to change that we know of.

    THE FUTURE
    Capitalism will persist largely because it must.  Redistribution will persist because it must.  And Corporatism with ceremonial rotation of electorate in european countries, and little rotation elsewhere, appears to be the standard of government that the world is settling upon.

    Everything else is just like sports teams – entertainment for the masses and not much else.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-socialism-the-same-as-capitalism

  • Janet Yellen Selected As New Fed Chair (2013-14): Would Larry Summers Be A Good Choice For The Next Chairman Of The Federal Reserve?

    (This is an ideological question.  And a loaded question. But I will try to do it justice anyway.)

    Summers is a ‘status quo’ economist with personal relationship with both the president and prominent wall street Democrats.  He is unobjectionable to conservatives since he has said impolitic but true things at times that they agree with. The consensus is that he will not put the country at risk or in painfully controversial debate.

    So he is a capable, mainstream, status-quo economist, with personal relationships with important and powerful people that is politically acceptable to the other side.   And, as such, he will not add volatility to the markets or the political sector, and that is probably a good thing for the people making the decision.

    If you were a mainstream economist facing the possibility of the euro shock, and having a deep understanding of the possibly permanent condition of the US economy, then I would suspect that you would argue that the Fed should take independent action to stimulate the economy even further and to encourage congress to spend like crazy.   But Larry Summers won’t do that.

    If you were a partisan left wing economist like you would be torn since you’d rather have the spending. If you were a democratic leader you want to make sure you keep the white house so you probably want someone who doesn’t create trouble.

    This is probably a fairly accurate answer to the question.

    https://www.quora.com/Janet-Yellen-Selected-as-New-Fed-Chair-2013-14-Would-Larry-Summers-be-a-good-choice-for-the-next-Chairman-of-the-Federal-Reserve

  • Has The Quality Of Content And Interactions On Quora Gone Down Drastically In The Recent Past?

    It appears that way.  Yes. It is declining.

    What is the difference between Quora and Yahoo forums or internet Newsgroups if there is no way to insulate questions and answers that meet scientific standards of argument from segmental and moral opinions and surveys?

    None.

    For example. A few commenters have referred to physics as a good topic to follow.  However physics has a high barrier to entry and a low sympathetic access and low normative content. There is nothing special about quora – its the nature of the topic. All discussions if physics are of this nature. 

    My specialty is political theory.  Political theory is extremely difficult to insulate from cognitive bias and logical error. This is because not only is it difficult to test, but political ideology unlike the the discipline of political economy, has evolved, largely by design, to insulate ideological statements from rational and empirical criticism, by adopting the rhetorical techniques of the monotheistic religions.

    And so separating ideological statements from institutional statements is nearly impossible. Ideology works precisely because it is non rational and it amplifies our biases and preferences. Ideology is populist, and political economy is organizational theory.

    Statements in political theory can correspond with the facts or fail to, but those facts are open to subjective interpretation.

    Means and ends produce empirical truths not subjective preferences, but means and ends are chosen by subjective preference. 

    Humans say and desire many things, but  humans demonstrate, and we can empirically measure, their actual behavior – and there is very little relationship between the two.

    Morals and norms are habits not truths, that largely reflect structures of production and reproduction – and some are necessary for certain outcomes and some are arbitrary, and some produce ‘bad’ outcomes over time. But humans almost universally defend habits as true goods.

    The relationship between logic math science and philosophy has been based on only one or two specious mathematical arguments using irrational sets.  The profound implication of Einstein has been mysticized by Cantor, and given permission to philosophers to undermine the institution of reason.

    Rights for example must be contractual. Some may be necessary, and some preferable, and some luxuries. But they cannot be intrinsic.

    Socialism and communism arent possible because economic calculation isnt possible nor can people possess incentives to act without the information in prices made possible by money, property and contract. Its not a choice.

    These are just some of the scientific criteria that bounds the discipline.  Yet almost all questions are some variation of “chocolate ice cream tastes good”. They are not rational.


    So, likewise, any CURRENT survey of Quora users will of necessity produce nothing more than the confirmation bias of users making self judgements. But empirically speaking, unless there is some way to filter ratio-scientific questions and comments from sentimental-moral-normative questions and comments, then it is an unstoppable race to the bottom for Quora.  Just like amy other commodity, value is the result of scarcity and quora is making the mistake of a mass market consumer companies : destroying the brand by overextending its market, thus degrading booth supply and demand.

    That my argument is a description of a socioeconomic law, is probably lost on the audience.

    But unless quora creates a barrier to entry, or a veil between each category of argument from the sentimental to the ratio empirical, then surveys will continue to present a positive opinion but quality of the product will in fact decline until a precipitous decline.

    This is deterministic.

    It cant change.





    https://www.quora.com/Has-the-quality-of-content-and-interactions-on-Quora-gone-down-drastically-in-the-recent-past

  • How Do Keynesians View Austrian Economics?

    GREAT QUESTION. I WILL TRY TO DO IT JUSTICE. BUT I HAVE TO GO BEYOND THE SCOPE OF YOUR QUESTION TO DO THAT.

    For you to consider yourself an Austrian in ECONOMIC theory, the minimum requirement is to subscribe to 1) the subjective theory of value, 2) the austrian theory of the business cycle and possibly 3) that money is non-neutral. That is all that would differentiate you from a mainstream economist.

    Mainstream economists TEND to argue that macro monetary policy is ‘above’ all of that:

    i) that the business cycle MAY be affected by the government, but that the net result is actually still better than it would be if we constrained the government.

    ii) The idea that we push problems down the road is fine, because in the progressive view, technology will save us in the future. (Really.)  

    iii) that individual benefits are distributed by complex means, so that in the end, it all works our if they take your property and give it to someone else, and increase risk and government debt.

    iiii) Austrian economics is logical, but does not place an emphasis on the empirical, or at least, casts doubt on the empirical statements mainstream economists make. And since economics as a discipline is actually econometrics then this means you have no place in economics departments.

    You would CHOOSE to study Austrian economics only if you either have a) a moral objection to Keynesianism, or b) it violates your observation about human nature, or c) the externalities it will produce accumulate into even more serious problems than the business cycle. (That’s what libertarians argue.)

    The reason some of us tend to choose Austrian economics is because we have a political interest in the long term effects of policy on society. And because we think norms and institutions are not arbitrary.  This category of questions is in the domain of POLITICAL ECONOMY, not really that of monetary economics.  And as such, most of us would recommend that you study Austrian economics in the context of political science, or ethical philosophy, rather than monetary economics, and do so in support of a political science degree where first year macro and micro economics really are sufficient.

    GMU does teach Austrianism and their program is competitive, and their students are sought out precisely for that reason. The developing world, where corruption is a serious problem, also tends to have austrian influence, because it explains at least in part, why these countries remain poor: they don’t have property rights.

    The truth is that in our advanced countries, where we do have at least marginal property rights and limited corruption, Austrian principles are not as important as macro principles.  So I think it is more that Austrianism is an early stage way of looking at the world, and once you’ve succeeded with institutions at the austrian level you can more easily make use of macro institutions without such substantially negative externalities. Although most dedicated austrians (the ideological kind) might disagree with me, I kind of doubt that I’d lose the argument.)  🙂 

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute

    https://www.quora.com/How-do-Keynesians-view-Austrian-economics

  • LESSONS ON ANTI-KEYNESIANISM FROM BENOIT MANDELBROT Keynesian noise is not signa

    LESSONS ON ANTI-KEYNESIANISM FROM BENOIT MANDELBROT

    Keynesian noise is not signal. It is just a selection bias that favors Leftist Dunning Kruegerists like Krugman, DeLong, Stiglitz and Thoma.

    LESSON FROM MILITARY HISTORIANS?

    All our economic data is noise representing the spread of anglo-american law by violence – and it’s entirely reversible.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-21 08:35:00 UTC

  • WE DON”T NEED IMMIGRANTS Why should we add immigrants so that we can pay the eld

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10185342/Britain-needs-millions-more-immigrants-to-reduce-strain-of-ageing-population.htmlNO WE DON”T NEED IMMIGRANTS

    Why should we add immigrants so that we can pay the elderly below-subsistence wages, instead of keeping the lot of them in the work force, as well as the young in the work force, and driving up wages?

    Compete for rare intellectual talent. But labor is little value unless its scarce.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-20 16:35:00 UTC