[W]ith the exception of the (restored) Spanish and (created) Belgium monarchies–all the surviving monarchies of Europe are either Protestant (UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden) or tiny (Luxembourg, Liechenstein, Monaco), with Catholic (Italy, Portugal, France, Austria) and Orthodox (Russia, Greece) national monarchies having a much higher failure rate than Protestant ones (Germany), suggests that being able to engage in (and keep) broad social bargains is a survival trait in a monarchy. (Being overthrown by Soviet occupation or Soviet-supported post-Nazi insurrection–Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania–can be discounted.) The Protestant “naked before God” all-in-this-together outlook, including different time perspectives, being an advantage over the Catholic & Orthodox absolution-available, hierarchy-rules approach.
Theme: Institution
-
Michael Phillip On The Incentives of Monarchy
[T]hough subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children are going to be living with the consequences of your decisions. Of the three major Axis powers, the two monarchies (the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan) found it easier to exit from fighting precisely because they were monarchies; there was someone with sufficient authority to say enough. Nazi Germany had to wait until Hitler was dead (and assassination proved to be a less reliable alternative). -
Michael Phillip On The Incentives of Monarchy
[T]hough subject to normal human failings, the long time horizons of monarchy is one of its distinct advantages. As economist Mancur Olson pointed out that, the longer the time horizon of the ruler, the more their interests tended to converge with those of their subjects. One tends to be somewhat more careful and accommodating the longer you and your children are going to be living with the consequences of your decisions. Of the three major Axis powers, the two monarchies (the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan) found it easier to exit from fighting precisely because they were monarchies; there was someone with sufficient authority to say enough. Nazi Germany had to wait until Hitler was dead (and assassination proved to be a less reliable alternative). -
STILL NEEDS AN ECONOMY – an with an economy comes trust
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/21/putins-groundhog-day-the-russian-people-keep-paying-the-price-for-their-leaders-incompetence/?hpid=z3RUSSIA STILL NEEDS AN ECONOMY – an with an economy comes trust.
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-22 03:33:00 UTC
-
HAYEK AND HOPPE – INSUFFICIENT Hayek is right that a condition of liberty can on
HAYEK AND HOPPE – INSUFFICIENT
Hayek is right that a condition of liberty can only be constructed by organically evolutionary (common) law of property. Hoppe is right that institutions can replace monopoly bureaucracy.
However, Hayek has no solution to making such a condition universally preferable; and Hoppe has no solution to the provision of the commons, nor for constructing a condition of liberty. Neither address the influence of the family or the intergenerational means of reproductive production or the entry of women’s socialistic biases into the sphere of politics – and neither addresses the problem of the conflict between the reproductive interests of the classes. Neither solves the problem of a heterogeneous post-agrarian, and possibly post familial, institutional system. Yet that is the set of conditions that we find ourselves in.
I think I have persuasively argued that over the long term (anyone can benefit from implementing technology that was invented by others in the sort term), high velocity economies are only possible under liberty, and that liberty is only possible under high trust, and that only law under universal standing can construct high trust and liberty, and that those most interested in maintaining this structure are those in the lower middle class and upper proletariat, who are willing to fight to un-constrain their superiors, so that they can gain the privileges of the group with the best leaders. This is why the working classes are conservatively biased – they will fall in status and material possession without the advantages given them by support – the enablement – of their elites.
So we can look at the successes of philosophers but also look at their failures. Hoppe tries to both preserve cosmopolitan separatism and reconstruct the hanseatic league. But this is not possible without the use of violence, exclusion, and the taking of territory sufficiently advantageous to produce the incentives to join such a polity, nor the economic advantage necessary to see it persist.
Hoppe’s solution of starting a clean polity isn’t a solution at all. It’s the equivalent of communism for libertines.
Territory is obtained, held, informal institutions constructed, formal institutions implemented, and monuments built, by the use of violence to do so by those desirous of obtaining advantage for themselves and their people.
Peace, is not an intrinsic good. The intrinsic good is the perpetuation of your family, tribe, and people in competition with other families tribes and peoples.
Everything else is just a better way of getting there.
And the alternative is conquest and suicide. Both of which we are victims of.
Curt Doolittle
The Propertarian Institute
Kiev, Ukraine
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-21 06:41:00 UTC
-
Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology. But lets talk a bit
Film critics function largely within the Cathedral ideology.
But lets talk a bit about the future of film.
The medium is no longer a vehicle for storytelling, but subconscious association; and I think the medium has evolved into something separate from storytelling (the narrative).
Human minds place greater scrutiny on ordered language than disordered imagery, and disordered imagery produces pre-cognitive associations, often appealing to pre-cognitive reactions. To some degree the narrative appeals more heavily to reason than to the intuition, while film can quite easily, like dreams, appeal more heavily to the intuition, and far less, to reason.
It is no longer important to construct a narrative if a dream will do. Films certainly appear to be evolving rapidly toward dreams.
I think this is the correct analysis of the evolution of the medium. The narrative or ‘puzzle’ maintains your attention while the medium communicates to your intuition.
This is only possible with a medium other than language. Although it is possible to use suggestion via language (I use this very heavily). One can offer positive suggestions and negative suggestions.
I think the high art of film will emerge as dream-creation because it does not require effort. And that the narrative, which is harder, and requires effort will remain the domain of storytelling.
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-20 04:25:00 UTC
-
THERE IS PLENTY OF ARISTOCRACY LEFT There is plenty of aristocracy around left t
THERE IS PLENTY OF ARISTOCRACY LEFT
There is plenty of aristocracy around left to repopulate senates, houses and thrones. First, even in all of the west, it’s a small number of people in total. Second, having a long (low) time preference isn’t rocket science either. It’s mostly genetics and family habits. Nobility – traditionalists and historians – are around if you look for them. The purpose of nobility is to judge – not lead. Leadership is for priests and public intellectuals. Nobility just limits the arena to commerce and construction of commons – not political power.
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-17 05:13:00 UTC
-
MERE POINTS OF VIEW What is the difference between Trust, Property Rights and Li
MERE POINTS OF VIEW
What is the difference between Trust, Property Rights and Liberty?
Well, trust is the name for the experience of low risk, and low risk is the name for low transaction costs. Now, an economists whose theoretical basis evolved during the era of mass production, or the generations that followed him, would perhaps also include information and monetary and political costs, but those in my generation would also include costs of investigating the reliability of any other individual as a trading partner. But in practical terms trust-en-toto is the name we use for the warranty of property rights, rather than trust in an individual to warranty his own actions.
Property Right is the term we use to positively label our normative warranty granting one another reciprocal insurance against free riding, and for providing the institutional means of resolving insurance claims for violations of the prohibition on free riding.
Liberty is the term we use for the experience of our normative warranty granting one another reciprocal insurance against free riding by members of the government which we have chartered with the special duty of preventing free riding. Liberty is the term then for the experience of living in conditions where peers use violence to prevent the violation of property rights by the conspiratorial monopoly of the state.
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-16 04:17:00 UTC
-
I don’t do should. I do is, want, incentive, exchange and institution. Should an
I don’t do should. I do is, want, incentive, exchange and institution. Should and belief are quaint antique words left over from the mystical era, for use with the ignorant, unintelligent, and little children.
Source date (UTC): 2014-12-15 12:58:00 UTC
-
Economy: Family Business and State Are Just Matters of Scale
(h/t Andy Curzon )(edited and revised)
[I]f we look at Austrian business cycle theory as merely an instance of the cycle of ‘flocking and schooling’ that follows any kind of change in knowledge that as a consequence produces an opportunity, then the century of pseudoscience was just another business process by which to exploit a market opportunity, and it played out as a series of eddies and pools, which are currently in the process of maximum exploitation and collapse.
And so governments are just temporary corporations exploiting business opportunities. And management(government), employees(bureaucracy), customers(consumers), and investors(citizens) all compete for the maximum returns.
This matches all political theory throughout history that suggests that people seek opportunities until it is possible to seek rents, and rents expand until the civilization collapses. It also matches the data that without private(shareholder) public(corporation) alliance no city state became economically competitive.
I disagree with Diamond for example, since I am pretty sure the reason for these collapses is a breakdown of incentives : the information system that allows for the organization of production. I would say that civilizations collapse either due to extreme efficiency followed by shocks (1200 BC), or the equivalent of cancer: damage to the information system that eliminates the relationship between production and consumption.
But since humans flock and school, then break off in smaller schools, to exploit opportunities, we are pretty good at a sort of fractal exploitation of every possible opportunity until it’s been exhausted.
I suspect either an expansion of statism in order to extend the status quo, or an upcoming era of increased statist tyranny in the name of order. If not I suspect collapse of the western control of commerce and trade, and an expansive war or system of wars, to fill the vacuum; and an acceleration of civil wars to take advantage of change at home.
It is better to study businesses than states, because the model is sufficient and the data is better.