Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • MANKIND, CIVILIZATION, CULTURE, SOCIETY, FAMILY, INDIVIDUAL Been trying to work

    MANKIND, CIVILIZATION, CULTURE, SOCIETY, FAMILY, INDIVIDUAL

    Been trying to work on constructing Propertarian definitions for these terms. Ran across this gem, that is very, very close.

    —“Civilization is fundamentally a cultural infrastructure of information and knowledge that serves survival and continuity. What distinguishes a civilization from a culture is that this infrastructure, having reached a critical level of complexity, becomes autonomous from constituent cities, nations, and empires. In ordinary cultures, the passing of information and knowledge may depend upon imitation or oral communication; in civilizations, this cultural memory, etched into clay or drawn into papyrus, takes on a life of its own”— (Andrew Bosworth, “The Genetics of Civilization: An Empirical Classification of Civilizations Based on Writing Systems, Comparative Civilizations Review, 2003, 49:9).

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-27 04:18:00 UTC

  • NUTSHELL: SOCIAL ORDERS As far as I know, the traditional family is the optimum

    NUTSHELL: SOCIAL ORDERS

    As far as I know, the traditional family is the optimum association of kin for the purpose of reproduction and production.

    As far as I know, only the Absolute nuclear family could evolve total suppression of parasitism.

    As far as I know, nothing prevents the total suppression of parasitism (high trust) while at the same time advocating the traditional family.

    Law must be constructed for individuals, but policy can easily be constructed for families.

    But this means that the quality of one’s family influences one’s life.

    So the underclass want to be free of their family constraints.

    And to parasitically consume the better families as a reproductive strategy: to reduce the competition of good genes, by expanding the production of bad genes.

    As far as I know the only substantive differences between groups are in the distribution of intellectual biases, intellectual capabilities and aggression.

    As far as I know the reason groups defeat other groups is that they increase the rates of reproduction of either their underclasses and expand territorially, or they decrease the rates of reproduction of their underclasses and expand economically and intellectually.

    So we can choose between equalitarian poverty (islam), poverty and castes (india/brazil), hierarchy and totalitarianism (china), or egalitarianism and aristocracy (old northern europe).

    The question is only whether we suppress the rates of reproduction of the underclasses and expand the rates of reproduction of the upper classes.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-18 05:13:00 UTC

  • Position on Marriage?  It’s a Contract.

    [M]y position is that the state has no place in private contracts, and that a marriage is a private contract.

    My concern is that the nation produce laws for individuals and policy for families and this may further reduce the policy bias toward the family as a unit of production and reproduction, and increasingly toward the consumption (hedonism) of individuals – dysgenia.

    A marriage creates a corporation in which shareholders pool assets, and it conveys limited power of attorney, to both (or more) shareholders to act on behalf of the other. If prenuptial agreements are adhered to rigidly, and there is no child support or spousal support then I am happy with it.

    So my suggestion is to take the Alabama strategy and remove the state from marriage agreements, and let people engage in whatever relations they want.

    So I am against state marriage en toto, and fully supportive of any voluntary contract that people wish to enter into. I would be comfortable with polygamy/polyamory evolving. But when I say I believe these things, it’s in the context of freedom of association and disassociation. So if you don’t want to serve polygamists, you don’t have to.

  • Position on Marriage?  It’s a Contract.

    [M]y position is that the state has no place in private contracts, and that a marriage is a private contract.

    My concern is that the nation produce laws for individuals and policy for families and this may further reduce the policy bias toward the family as a unit of production and reproduction, and increasingly toward the consumption (hedonism) of individuals – dysgenia.

    A marriage creates a corporation in which shareholders pool assets, and it conveys limited power of attorney, to both (or more) shareholders to act on behalf of the other. If prenuptial agreements are adhered to rigidly, and there is no child support or spousal support then I am happy with it.

    So my suggestion is to take the Alabama strategy and remove the state from marriage agreements, and let people engage in whatever relations they want.

    So I am against state marriage en toto, and fully supportive of any voluntary contract that people wish to enter into. I would be comfortable with polygamy/polyamory evolving. But when I say I believe these things, it’s in the context of freedom of association and disassociation. So if you don’t want to serve polygamists, you don’t have to.

  • STANGELOOP NRx AND YARVIN Here is how it makes sense. if you want to object to a

    STANGELOOP NRx AND YARVIN

    Here is how it makes sense. if you want to object to a speaker, then gather a petition of not less than 5% of the registered attendees. If you gather that petition, then the speaker AND the signatories are disinvited.

    This stops shenanigans.

    NOTE: I am in favor of violence against gossipers. I mean, Steve Klabnik (the lefty who complained vociferously) advocates use of violence against his opponents. If you have an argument then put one forward. If you want to use gossip, rallying and shaming, then that is not an argument. My agreement to forgo violence is predicated on your limiting yourself to truthful, rational, scientific, argument. If you violate that agreement then I am no longer bound by an agreement to cooperate. And we can have a duel. And if you refuse the duel, then I will just rectify the situation.

    Do you see now why libel, slander, and duel were so important to western development?

    Do you see why gossip, pseudo-morality, pseudo-rationalism, propaganda, and pseudoscience were so effectively used against the west?

    I do.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-06-16 12:51:00 UTC

  • Five Axis of Intertemporal Production

    (from elsewhere) [T]here are five necessary axis of inter-temporal production:

    1) The individual, the family, and the church (the production of generations) 2) The partnership, the corporation, the bank, the treasury. (The production of goods and services. 3) The local government, state government, and the federal government. (the production of commons) 4) The judiciary (the resolution of disputes) 5) The Militia and the Military (the preservation of the monopoly rules of order, allocations of property, and commons.) Our founders, as innovators, lacked sufficient understanding how to safeguard each – because they could not imagine the future so radically different after 1830, and particularly after 1914.

  • Five Axis of Intertemporal Production

    (from elsewhere) [T]here are five necessary axis of inter-temporal production:

    1) The individual, the family, and the church (the production of generations) 2) The partnership, the corporation, the bank, the treasury. (The production of goods and services. 3) The local government, state government, and the federal government. (the production of commons) 4) The judiciary (the resolution of disputes) 5) The Militia and the Military (the preservation of the monopoly rules of order, allocations of property, and commons.) Our founders, as innovators, lacked sufficient understanding how to safeguard each – because they could not imagine the future so radically different after 1830, and particularly after 1914.

  • Corporations were, like Limited Monopolies (IP), and like Letters of Marque, Limited Duration Contracts in the Public Interest

    [A] Month of Quotes on Corporatism by Tom Reeves

    —“…how corporations came about — they were all one-off, special purpose and limited-duration monopolies created in the public interest, not charters that the government let you file that were just like limited partnership agreements.”— Tom Reeves

    The same is true for Intellectual property (which we need to constrain), and Letters of Marque (which we need to restore).

    What is interesting, is that if they are not one-off’s, that means that they are not rational and calculable, right?

    —“moral suasion is a meaningful way for people to check each other’s damaging behavior. Before governments started creating corporations “in the public interest,” business enterprises were all intimately tied to communities, their owners were not absolved of potential personal liability, and common law provided effective means of halting damaging behavior entirely.”—Tom Reeves

    Restated: moral suasion evolved to raise the cost of each other’s imposition of costs, and therefore preserve the value of cooperation, and incentive to cooperate.

    —“We are swimming in moral hazard, risk socialization and needless polarization and conflict — because governments and the corporations they [create] interfere with truly voluntary transactions, catallaxy, and defense of person and property (both private and commons).”—Tom Reeves

    —“[Police] act in out-of-control ways largely because they are unaccountable in the sense they have little or no personal liability for what they do (and their departments/politicians will protect them if they misbehave). They’re a lot like crony capitalists, politicians and bureaucrats (all shielded by the hand of government). To fight corruption, bad behavior, “mistakes” and pervasive risk-socialization, we need to alter our institutional structures to demand more skin in the game from everyone. Right now, we are just playing games with who’s fat is in what fire, in ways that systematically advantage some while oppressing others.”—Tom Reeves

    —“Corporations are creatures of government; that’s why we keep running to government to beg our politicians and bureaucrats to “fix” things, rather than going to out neighbors to ask them to knock off stuff that harms members of the community.”— Tom Reeves

    —“Do you realize that crony capitalism and the mega regulatory state both are fuelled by the dynamic of unaccountability, lack of transparency, moral hazard and risk socialization that have been set in motion by governments selling masks of limited liability etc. to shareholders and those who inhabit the corporations that then grow?—Tom Reeves

    —“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”—Frédéric Bastiat (By Tom Reeves)


    “The term ‘catallactics’ was derived from the Greek verb katallattein (or katallassein) which meant, significantly, not only ‘to exchange’ but also ‘to admit into the community’ and ‘to change from enemy into friend’. From it the adjective ‘catallactic’ has been derived to serve in the place of ‘economic’ to describe the kind of phenomena with which the science of catallactics deals. The ancient Greeks knew neither this term nor had a corresponding noun; if they had formed one it would probably have been katallaxia. From this we can form an English term catallaxy which we shall use to describe the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market. A catallaxy is thus the special kind of spontaneous order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of the law of property, tort and contract.”
    (Hayek, F. A., 1982, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2, pp. 108-109).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallaxy

    —“Catallaxy” is just a term used to describe certain transactions (transactions where markets exist). It’s a tool, not a dogma, and has no tenets.I used the term the other day in a comment thread to point out that markets are destroying the environment, primarily because of property theft and risk externalization via government claims to own the oceans and indigenous resources and because government-made corporations are machines of risk-socialization. Austrian economics is quite useful to understanding how crony capitalism is destroying both society and our natural world.”—Tom Reeves

  • Corporations were, like Limited Monopolies (IP), and like Letters of Marque, Limited Duration Contracts in the Public Interest

    [A] Month of Quotes on Corporatism by Tom Reeves

    —“…how corporations came about — they were all one-off, special purpose and limited-duration monopolies created in the public interest, not charters that the government let you file that were just like limited partnership agreements.”— Tom Reeves

    The same is true for Intellectual property (which we need to constrain), and Letters of Marque (which we need to restore).

    What is interesting, is that if they are not one-off’s, that means that they are not rational and calculable, right?

    —“moral suasion is a meaningful way for people to check each other’s damaging behavior. Before governments started creating corporations “in the public interest,” business enterprises were all intimately tied to communities, their owners were not absolved of potential personal liability, and common law provided effective means of halting damaging behavior entirely.”—Tom Reeves

    Restated: moral suasion evolved to raise the cost of each other’s imposition of costs, and therefore preserve the value of cooperation, and incentive to cooperate.

    —“We are swimming in moral hazard, risk socialization and needless polarization and conflict — because governments and the corporations they [create] interfere with truly voluntary transactions, catallaxy, and defense of person and property (both private and commons).”—Tom Reeves

    —“[Police] act in out-of-control ways largely because they are unaccountable in the sense they have little or no personal liability for what they do (and their departments/politicians will protect them if they misbehave). They’re a lot like crony capitalists, politicians and bureaucrats (all shielded by the hand of government). To fight corruption, bad behavior, “mistakes” and pervasive risk-socialization, we need to alter our institutional structures to demand more skin in the game from everyone. Right now, we are just playing games with who’s fat is in what fire, in ways that systematically advantage some while oppressing others.”—Tom Reeves

    —“Corporations are creatures of government; that’s why we keep running to government to beg our politicians and bureaucrats to “fix” things, rather than going to out neighbors to ask them to knock off stuff that harms members of the community.”— Tom Reeves

    —“Do you realize that crony capitalism and the mega regulatory state both are fuelled by the dynamic of unaccountability, lack of transparency, moral hazard and risk socialization that have been set in motion by governments selling masks of limited liability etc. to shareholders and those who inhabit the corporations that then grow?—Tom Reeves

    —“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”—Frédéric Bastiat (By Tom Reeves)


    “The term ‘catallactics’ was derived from the Greek verb katallattein (or katallassein) which meant, significantly, not only ‘to exchange’ but also ‘to admit into the community’ and ‘to change from enemy into friend’. From it the adjective ‘catallactic’ has been derived to serve in the place of ‘economic’ to describe the kind of phenomena with which the science of catallactics deals. The ancient Greeks knew neither this term nor had a corresponding noun; if they had formed one it would probably have been katallaxia. From this we can form an English term catallaxy which we shall use to describe the order brought about by the mutual adjustment of many individual economies in a market. A catallaxy is thus the special kind of spontaneous order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of the law of property, tort and contract.”
    (Hayek, F. A., 1982, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2, pp. 108-109).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catallaxy

    —“Catallaxy” is just a term used to describe certain transactions (transactions where markets exist). It’s a tool, not a dogma, and has no tenets.I used the term the other day in a comment thread to point out that markets are destroying the environment, primarily because of property theft and risk externalization via government claims to own the oceans and indigenous resources and because government-made corporations are machines of risk-socialization. Austrian economics is quite useful to understanding how crony capitalism is destroying both society and our natural world.”—Tom Reeves

  • Q: How Do You Reconcile The Ideal of Property Rights, and Observable Reality: Corporatism, and Cronyism?

    —“Question for Curt: How does property rights fit into mixed economies, corporatism and cronyism? If a corporation has property rights is that for eternity? Who decides?”— Beauregard.

    Beauregard, [I]’m going to try to guess at what “fit in” means. I think you mean, “How do we reconcile the apparent conflicts between the logical ideal of property rights theory, and the existential reality of mixed economies, pervasive corporatism, and cronyism?” The problem I’m having is that I’m not really sure what you’re asking. So I’ll stab in the dark trying to reconcile as best I can. 1) Mixed Economies: Mixed economies are as simple as corporations with shareholders who receive dividends on their investments – whether those investments are in sweat equity (observing norms), acting in an employee capacity(participating in the market of production distribution and trade), or whether one is an investor (taxpayer). There is no difference between a mixed economy and a corporation. It’s an organization where different interests combine different resources, to produce, distribute, and trade. 2) Corporatism: Corporatism exists because the state wanted to give capital a free ride, and took upon policing corporations in the legislature by removing universal standing under the common law. This is a problem of representative democracy. The answer is to revoke the corporate privilege, restore universal standing, and eliminate shareholder voting which is meaningless. (This takes a lot of explanation but I know how to address it.) 3) Cronyism: Cronyism exists because of the combination of representative government policing corporations by rather than citizen policing under universal standing. And because funding choices (monetary, fiscal trade, and industrial policy) are made by representatives rather than held at auction, using modern technology. 4) Corporate ‘Rights’: As for corporate rights, I don’t know what you’re referring to. But if the current shareholders of a corporation purchased rights to their shares, and therefore to a share of some property or other, or that organization persists as a functional organizational entity then it is hard to see how those rights should terminate. But you could be referring to some strange exception like intellectual property rights or something, and I might not really be able to guess your question. [A]ll of these problems arise because of three simple problems. First, a technological problem of the pre-industrial era where time and the speed of communications were problematic. We are not challenged by these problems any longer. Second, by the conflation of law-making (the judiciary) with commons-creation (the government), into a law-making-body called the legislature. Instead, if the government could not make law, only contract enforcible under law, and so the legislature can only produce contracts and not laws, and contracts all expire with the people who wrote them, then there is a time limit on all relations between the public (commons) and the private sector, and laws cannot be constructed to favor corporations for the benefit of politicians. Third, there is no reason whatsoever for majority rule. Monopoly government is pointless. Law must be decidable, so the law must exist as a monopoly definition of property and rights. However, the construction of contracts under that law, for the production of commons, do not need universal approval. They need only prevent imposition of costs on non-participants under the rule of law which protects non-participants property rights from exactly those kinds of attacks. So as far as I know, all of the questions you’re asking are entirely compatible with property rights theory (or at least by Propertarianism), and in fact, they are only confusing in the absence of property rights theory. There are some interesting human cognitive biases in play in the populace but that’s another story for another time.. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine